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INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. 



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TEE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. 



THE 



SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 



BY 



SHELDON AMOS, M. A., 

AUTnou OF 'the science of law,' etc.; late peofessor of jxtrtspeitdence in 

UNITEESITY COLLEGE, LONDON. 



S" 




NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

1, 3, AND 5 BOND STEEET. 

1883. 



(^ 



PREFACE. 



I HAVE done my best to avoid tlie temptation of con- 
structing an ideal polity founded on mere guesses and 
hopes. 

That there is an ideal polity for each State, if not 
one for all States, I steadfastly believe. But it is only 
to be discovered in the paths of history and observa- 
tion. 

In passing from the ' Science of Law ^ to that of 
Politics, some change of method is inevitable, owing to 
the superior complexity and larger range of the subject- 
matter. But the exercise, once become familiar in the 
narrower field, of applying a severe terminology and 
logical process to ethical notions will be found of the 
highest service in the wider field. 

A two years' journey round the world, in the course 
of which I visited the chief centres of political life, 
ancient and modern, in Europe, America, Australasia, 
Polynesia, and North Africa, has not only helped me 
with illustrations, but has been of no small use in 
stimulating thought. 

Alexandria. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE I. 

PAGE 
NATURE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS . . 1 



CHAPTER II. 

POLITICAL TERMS 56 

CHAPTER ni. 

POLITICAL REASONING .107 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA OF MODERN POLITICS . . . 126 

CHAPTER V. 

THE PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL LIFE AND ACTION. 138 

CHAPTER VI. 

CONSTITUTIONS , . 174 

CHAPTER VII. 

LOCAL GOVERNMENT 277 



VUl CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

PAGE 
THE GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES . . . . , 311 



CHAPTER IX. 

FOREIGN RELATIONS ....... 342 

CHAPTER X. 

THE PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT 371 

CHAPTER XI. 

REVOLUTIONS IN STATES . . . . . .427 

CHAPTER XII. 

RIGHT AND WRONG IN POLITICS • . . • . . 447 

INDEX ' . . . .485 



THE 

SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

CHAPTER I. 

KATCRE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIEKCE OF POLITICS. 

The progress of tlie strictly physical sciences in modern 
times has had a two-fold influence on the advancement 
of those branches of knowledge which deal less with 
physical than with moral, social, and political facts. 
On the one hand, the exact methods and indisputable 
conclusions of the sciences concerned with matter have 
inaugurated modes of study and enquiry which are 
believed to be of universal application. On the other 
hand, the standard of rigorous logic in all studies is so 
far exalted that those subjects of thought or investi- 
gation which do not conform to identically the same 
standard as that maintained for the study of matter 
are thought to be not worth pursuing with any regard 
to the claims of a severe logical process. This sort of 
antipathy between the physical and the ethical regions 
of search and argument has been intensified by the co- 
existence of two opposed orders of minds, the ardently 
speculative and the persistently practical. The former 



2 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

are discontented with the notion of a so-called Science 
of Politics because of the complexity of the subject- 
matter, and the intrusion, at all points, of such seemingly 
incalculable factors as the will and passions of mankind. 
Practical statesmen, again, immersed in actual business, 
and oppressed by the ever-recurring presence of new 
emergencies, almost resent the notion of applying the 
comprehensive principles of science, and still more the 
conjectural use of foresight, in respect of subjects 
which, for them, are in ceaseless flux, and can, at best, 
only be safely and wisely handled by momentarily 
adjusted contrivances. 

Between these two extreme classes lies all the large 
portion of society composed of persons with minds 
less distinctly determined and trained in one direction 
or the other, and therefore all the more open to be 
impressed by influences derived from sound thinkers 
and energetic workers, but experiencing these influences 
onlj- in a loose and diluted form. The aggregate 
result is that the subject of Politics floats in the 
public mind either as a mere field for ingenious chicane 
or as a boundless waste for the evolutions of scholastic 
phantasy. If Politics are to be vindicated from the 
aspersions cast upon them from the opposite quarters 
here indicated, and are ever to be erected into a science 
Avith its own appropriate methods and limitations, the 
foundation of these sceptical suspicions must be in- 
vestigated and their real value strictly assessed. The 
investigation will proceed as follows. 

1. One obvious class of objections to the possibility 
of applying rigorous scientific methods to Politics is 
founded on the number and nature of the component 
and preparatory studies which are presupposed in 



NATUBE AND LIMITS OF TUE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 3 

all strict enquiries into tlie theory of Government. 
Assuming that the physical sciences,— beginning (say) 
-with astronomy and ending with physiology or psycho- 
logy^ — have reached a strictly scientific stage, there yet 
remain, as properly leading the way to the study of 
Politics, all those branches of knowledge which depend 
on the composite nature of man both as isolated and as 
in society. Such are Ethics in the Aristotelian sense, 
comprehending as topics decorum and propriety as well 
as duty ; political economy, which deals with the con- 
ditions under which national wealth is produced, 
accumulated, and distributed ; law and legislation, 
(sometimes comprised under the general head of juris- 
prudence) which deal with the essential nature, logical 
distribution, and historical growth of the general rules 
of conduct which all Governments maintain and enforce ; 
and lastly, the somewhat novel science of Sociology, 
which deals with the inherent problems to which the 
aggregation of mankind into groups gives rise, so far 
as these problems can be abstracted and treated inde- 
pendently of Government. 

This list of studies, which might be multiplied and 
varied to any extent according to individual proclivities, 
encloses large areas of knowledge over the subjects of 
which the human will and human passions must have, at 
least in the course of ages and in passing from country 
to country, an amount of influence which seems to set 
scientific precision at defiance. Nevertheless, and in 
spite of all the controversies waged among those who 
prosecute these studies, there is no doubt that in all these 
pursuits the most searching and exact methods, so far as 
they are applicable, are beginning to be used, and the 
certainty and universality of the sequence of cause and 



4 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

effect, — that is, of Laws of Nature, — to be recognised 
as a premise. 

The extension of the like severity of process to 
political studies is mainly delayed by the constantly 
disappointing incompleteness of the constituent and 
preparatory studies just enumerated. A Science of 
Politics, indeed, has its own special sources of em- 
barrassment, owing, among other things, to the necessity 
of co-ordinating in one view all the conclusions dedueible 
from those other, and as it were introductory, researches. 
Of course this process of combination abounds with its 
own manifold opportunities of error ; but this fact need 
no more produce despair than the composite quality 
of physiology leads the student to be sceptical of the 
scientific character of enquiries into the constitution 
of the animal world. 

There is a vast difference between calling a branch 
of knowledge a science, because it can only be profitably 
studied by the use of the same logical methods as are 
indispensable in the mastery of the best-established phy- 
sical sciences, and being, as yet, scientifically cultivated, 
or advanced in outward form to the full proportions 
of a maturely developed science. It may be, indeed, 
that, from a number of causes to be shortly adverted 
to. Politics will always present an appearance neither 
homogeneous nor, in one sense, exact. But these de- 
fects neither impair the genuine truth of the universal 
laws to which the topic is submitted, nor ought to 
convey any imputation on the only methods serviceable 
in treating it. 

Admitting as a provisional and practical postulate 
the freedom of the human will, it might indeed seem to 
be impossible, on the face of it, to bring within the 



NATURE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIEN'CE OF POLITICS. 5 

domain of stringent scientific methods any class of 
materials largely conversant with the direct actions 
and emotions of mankind. But there are certain cor- 
rections which reduce the significance of any sceptical 
conclusions which might be drawn. 

In the first place, the more extensively and minutely 
historical studies are carried on and the investigations 
of travellers pursued and recorded, the more uniform 
does human nature appear, and the more calculable are 
the actions, sentiments, and emotions of large classes 
of mankind, when the antecedents and surrounding con- 
ditions are ascertained. So far as political enquiries 
are concerned, it is more with classes, groups, and 
assemblages of men, and with considerable stretches 
of time, than with any individual men at a given 
moment that the investigator is occupied. Thus the 
historical method, in proportion as it is extensively 
pursued, contains in itself its own correctives. 

But in the second place, if the researches of his- 
torians and the reports of travellers contain an endless 
and boundless mass of facts which seem rather to 
increase the list of human eccentricities than to reduce 
it by discovering a dominant order and an integral unit 
of progress and purpose, yet here again the problem of 
finding a scientific form for the theory of Government 
is on the whole simplified rather than otherwise. As 
explorations of all sorts are multi]3lied and extend, 
they take the place of the logical instrument of ex- 
periment ; and the result of them is that a limited 
number of propositions are evolved which admit of 
being announced with a fair assurance of their uni- 
versality. If the area of observation be limited, the 
truths reached will, indeed, be proportionately restrit^ted 



6 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

in number^ but within this area the}" will be none the 
less valid. 

Thus, in the science of Political Economy, it is not 
universally true that, in all conditions of society, popu- 
lation tends to increase out of proportion to the means 
of subsistence ; for the effective desire of individual 
self-enrichment constitutes in certain conditions a 
reparative and compensating force. So in Law, it is 
not everywhere true that a human being is, in a legal 
sense, a person and not a thing ; or that laws proceed 
from a consciously acting Political Authority ; or that 
it is recognised as an axiom that taxation and repre- 
sentation go together. The several propositions here 
chosen by way of illustration from two of the component 
sciences which, with others, go to constitute the com- 
plete range of political studies, and help to convert those 
studies into a separate science, are only partially and 
relatively true at certain places and periods. But, within 
these limits of time and place, their truth, and the truth 
of all like propositions, is invariable and incontestable. 

Thus if the composite nature of Politics impairs the 
universality of the majority of the propositions with 
which it is concerned, this only establishes the rela- 
tivity of these studies, and in no wise detracts from 
their usefulness or supersedes the employment of those 
rigorous logical methods which in other respects continue 
to be applicable. 

2. Another reason which accounts for the unscientific 
aspect under which political studies nsuaFy present 
themselves is that it very rarely happens, or has hap- 
pened, that conscious attention to the true character of 
Governmental problems, to their diflBculties, and to the 
modes of their solution, i3 aroused in any nation till 



NATURE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 7 

long after a practical solution of some kind has been 
instinctively resorted to, and a considerable advance 
in the art of administration achieved. 

An exception might be supposed to exist in the 
case of colonies and dependencies, at the first founda- 
tion of which all the materials seem to be within 
the conscious control of the parent or governing State. 
But it is just on this very account that theoretical truths 
have here their most hopeful platform, and are habitually 
applied in practice to an extent which, because of un- 
noticed but vitiating errors of calculation, is often 
fraught with serious hazard. The Cornwallis settle- 
ment in Bengal, the early land policy of the Australian 
Colonies, and the attempted central taxation of the 
American Colonies by the British Parliament, are all 
instances of the over-hasty application, to materials 
believed to be malleable, of firmly fixed political princi- 
ples. The principles themselves, indeed, in all these 
cases, needed re-examination and re-statement. 

The obstacles to at once applying even the best- 
established principles of Government in all conceivable 
emergencies, so soon as conscious attention happens 
to be awakened to the national needs, are sufficiently 
obvious. It is not only that the principles them- 
selves usually demand modification in view of the 
circumstances of the people and of the day, but that 
the greatest allowance must always be made in all 
political reforms for the influence of fixed sentiments 
and habits. It also may happen that bad institutions, 
— such as a bad poor-law system, or, in the criminal 
law, a falsely conceived relationship between crimes 
and punishments, — may have generated a vast and 
complex web of aflBliated ideas, customs, institutions. 



8 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

and laws, wliicli can severally be neither defended in 
principle nor yet rudely disdained and cast aside. 

Tor not only do custom and habit enable a people, or 
classes of a people, to work in long established grooves 
with the smallest amount of friction and obstruction ; 
but the mere fact of the long existence of a familiar 
usage so far fashions in its own image the mind, and 
even the conscience, of a people, that a critical reformer 
has a hard and unpopular task to perform in assaulting 
even the most indefensible abuses. The large mass of 
the people, if disused to political change of any but 
the most cautious, slow, and tentative kind, have 
their sentiments of loyalty and reverence outraged 
by the sudden introduction of what is new and un- 
familiar. Their mind has been trained and pruned 
in such a way as to be unable to conceive, as a mere 
intellectual notion, a better ordered world than that 
in which they live. Where too great a disparity both 
in sentiments and in intellect exists between the re- 
former and the people, or even between different classes 
of the people in the same community, it may show 
that the times are not yet ripe for changes recom- 
mended by deference to the claims of logic and of 
justice. 

Instances in point are supplied by the difficulties 
experienced by the British Indian Government in dealing 
with such patently immoral institutions as polygamy ; 
by the attachment of the Scotch to a law of marriage 
which notoriously facilitates the most cruel of frauds ; 
and by the obstacles in all countries to any com- 
prehensive reconstruction of the systems of land-tenure 
and inheritance, and of civil, and still more of crimi- 
nal, procedure* These last-mentioned institutions have 



NATUKE A:ND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 9 

seldom been radically altered in any country by any 
process short of revolution, however persuasive the 
voice of right, of reason, and of utility, in favour of 
change. So vast is the number of individual persons 
interested in these classes of matters, so well habituated 
are they, and consequently so deeply attached, to the 
recognised forms, usages, or even gestures, customarily 
in use, — many of which are of a public nature and are 
daily witnessed by all men, — that any vital re-con 
struction seems little short of sacrilege, and the most 
conclusive reasons in favour of it are scarcely compre 
hensible. 

3. It is needless to point out that the conception of 
Politics as a Science is much affected by the imperfec- 
tions of Politics as a practical Art. It is not only 
by reason of the existence of ineradicable institutions 
and ideas that the scientific development of political 
studies is hampered and delayed. There is another 
reason of a still more commanding importance which 
operates in the same direction with a still more signal 
force. It is that, at any given moment, when the legis- 
lator, or administrator, would otherwise most desire to 
govern with due regard to well-established principles 
dictated by abstract political science, he is imperatively 
urged on to the front, and impelled into action, by the 
pressing necessity of instantly choosing between a 
limited number of possible alternative courses. Most 
of all is this the case in what are sometimes called 
constitutionally-governed countries, — that is, countries 
in which representative institutions have reached a 
tolerable degree of advancement, and political know- 
ledge and interest are widely diffused. In these circum- 
stances a spontaneous organisation of political leaders 



10 THE SCIENCE OP POLITICS. 

and their respective followers into parties for the pur- 
pose of uniform and combined action is sure to have 
taken place. 

The result is, that an artificial effort will be made, 
at each critical occurrence which seems to call for the 
intervention of the Government, to narrow the possible 
courses of action to a very few immediately intelligible 
expedients, recommended rather by their rough con- 
formity to some pre-existing schemes or ideals in favour 
with the different contending parties than by their in- 
trinsic harmony with scientific requirements. No doubt 
the party leader who is himself imbued with a scientific 
spirit, and is personally disposed to do as little violence 
as possible to his cultured instincts, will do his utmost 
to bring all his measures into the shape which his 
logical and historical training, applied to all the cir- 
cumstances of the special case, leads him to desire. Bat 
action at once and without farther delay is unavoidable. 
A decision can only be deferred at the cost either 
of letting go the opportunity for providing a remedy 
of some sort for a possibly crying abuse ; or of openly 
confessing impotency; or of surrendering to others a 
leadership which, with all its demerits, is probably 
believed to be, on the whole, fraught with good rather 
than with evil. Thus the peremptoriness of political 
opportunities, and the necessity of instant action, with- 
stand, in a country with free representative institutions, 
every effort to impart to political action through a 
long period a comprehensive, consistent, and scientific 
character. 

It is no wonder if the same class of facts re-acts on 
the intellectual conception of the position of Politics as 
a subject of study and of knowledge. 



NATUKE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 11 

The topic is naturally relegated to the region of 
caprice and accident, or to that of tentative experiment 
and spasmodic contrivance. This intellectual conse- 
quence is intensified by the fact that all Governments, 
—and not least those known at the present day as the 
freest and, on the whole, the soundest, — are habitually 
made the arena of purely ambitious contention, of 
selfisli aspiration, and even of corrupt conspiracies 
against the public well-being. The wider the terri- 
torial area of any particular Government, and the more 
complicated and extensive its essential mechanism, 
the more opportunity there is for the exhibition of 
personal or, at the most, of local selfseeking. So 
far as this prevails, Politics become degraded into a 
mere vulgar struggle for money, oflBce, or power. All 
actual reference to scientific considerations is excluded. 
The tone of public thought and sentiment becomes 
proportionately infected, and all the claims which 
might otherwise be asserted on behalf of Politics to 
take its place by th.e side of other sciences dealing with 
such moral elements as the human Will meet with a 
sceptical repudiation. 

Wliere free representative institutions are not 
found, and absolutism of one type or another prevails, 
the way is more open for a deliberate choice of the 
policy to be pursued in any sudden emergency. Such 
a case has presented itself, again and again, on the 
occurrence of famines in British India. Could such a 
casualty occur without being long foreseen in a country 
enjoying a popular constitution, the question of reme- 
dies would be instantly debated in every kind of public 
assembly, and by all the organs of public opinion, with a 



12 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

ferment of party zeal which would daily gain in heat and 
vehemence, and would impel statesmen to select wdth 
over much precipitation between the limited number of 
remedial measures which enjoyed, for one cause or 
another, the popular favour. 

The legislation demanded in the case of a failure of 
the potato-crop in Ireland has more than once illus- 
trated this position. One party advocates the institution 
of public works, of a purely wasteful or superfluous 
kind, on an enormous scale ; another is in favour of in- 
discriminate outdoor relief; a third recommends, with 
the late Lord George Bentinck, the construction at the 
public cost of railways, with the purpose at once of 
employing labour on a large scale and of distributing 
food. However much a judicious statesman may be 
opposed to all these views, yet for fear of being reduced 
to nullity, and of having to give place to opponents, 
he can only connect his own name with, and invite 
the adhesion of his followers to, what seems on the 
whole the least objectionable of the popular alter- 
natives. The utmost he can do is to combine different 
courses in such a way as that some special evil of one 
may neutralise some greater evil of another, and to 
introduce modifications which may escape general atten- 
tion, but which none the less go some way, at least, to 
qualify the mischievous operation of the scheme, a pro- 
fessed adoption of which cannot be evaded. 

It will depend, of course, very largely on the con- 
stitutional circumstances of the country how far, even 
in the case of a pressing emergency, the art of politics 
may be made to comply with the requirements of 
scientifically ascertained laws. Where a large and 
promiscuous population has to be satisfied or must bo 



NATUKE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 13 

appealed to by statesmen for political support, the 
measures must be instantly intelligible and not too far 
removed in their conception from the average ken of 
mankind as represented then and there. The ulterior 
objects proposed must not belong to a too distant 
future : the pursuit of them must not involve what 
seem to most people excessive or disproportionate 
sacrifices : they must easily and obviously connect 
theuiselves with the common wants and feelings of the 
many at the moment, rather than with the (seemingly) 
problematical aspirations of a few in the indefinite 
future. 

The case is different where popular government has 
not yet established itself, and where, in consequence, 
none of the above obstacles, even at a critical juncture 
calling for the immediate intervention of the legislator 
or administrator, are presented. But the exemption of 
the statesman or ruler from the checks of popular 
control of a constitutional kind by no means ensures 
a deference to purely scientific demands. Timidity, 
rashness, prejudice, personal rivalries, and the still 
less worthy influences of calculating self-interest or of 
a narrow ambition, dwarf and vitiate a policy not less 
surely than do the impediments due to popular ignor- 
ance and incompetence. The statesman, in the one 
case as in the other, is bound to act, — and this too with- 
out delay ; and, though a scientific resolution cannot 
be excluded, yet, from one cause or another, the tempta- 
tions to deviate to this or that side are numerous and 
urgent. There have indeed been statesmen who have 
so far impressed their -own personality on their policy, 
and communicated their views and aspirations to the 
bulk of the governing population that, at special 
2 



14 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

exigencies, the public confidence previously won lias 
enabled tliem to dictate a course scarcely comprehended 
by the people at large. Such a position was occupied 
on certain occasions by Count Cavour in Italy, Presi- 
dents Lincoln and Grant in the United States, even to 
some extent by Prince Bismarck in Germany, to a still 
greater extent by M. Thiers in Prance, conspicuously 
by the Duke of Marlborough for a time in England, 
and in modern times by Sir P.. Peel, Lord Palmerston, 
and Mr. Gladstone. 

So also in Governments not controlled by repre- 
sentative institutions, — such as those of almost all the 
States of Europe except England, up to very recent 
days, — there have always been found exceptional rulers 
who, in spite of all temptations to indulge selfish 
prepossessions in favour of ease or aggrand-sement, 
have availed themselves of the peculiar felicity of 
their situation to pursue a consistent and far-sighted 
policy, undisturbed by all casual occurrences or mis- 
adventures. To this class have belonged many well- 
known administrators of British India and of the Crown 
Colonies of Great Britain, as well as certain absolute 
sovereigns in ancient and modern times. 

It appears, then, that not only does the imminent 
necessity for immediate action present serious obstacles 
to the pursuit of a policy founded on the teachings of 
critical observation and a wide-reaching experience — 
that is, on science, — but the mere fact that statesmen 
are constantly impelled to act at once in directions 
w-hich very imperfectly correspond to their own con- 
ceptions of what is really best throws a shadow of 
doubt and uncertainty over the scientific character 
of the studies concerned. It is felt, not unreason- 



NATURE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 15 

ably, that if those who are most concerned to be 
acquainted with the best methods of political re- 
search forbear to turn these methods to account at the 
moment of the utmost need, this is at least as likely 
to result from the inherently imperfect and illogical 
nature of the branch of knowledge in question as from 
any other cause. To this comprehensive scepticism 
some of the classes of facts above adverted to may be 
held to supply an answer. The unscientific character 
of a policy adopted at any crisis has often been an 
exact measure of the amount of external pressure 
applied through the competition of factions, or through 
the impetuosity of a populace only jaded into an 
unwonted attention to political affairs by exceptional 
events. Where this pressure is not at hand, rulers 
still may, indeed, through unworthy influences and 
motives, prefer the worse to the better way; but 
enough, instances of the persistent maintenance of a 
deliberately adopted policy in the face of the most 
seductive allurements to fluctuation have been exhibited 
to show that it cannot be fairly alleged that politics 
must necessarily be unscientific because few in the real 
business of life have time, or liberty, or tenacity of 
purpose, sufficient to withstand the impetuous torrent 
of popular zeal generated by sudden crises or catas- 
trophes. 

Probably the most real and enduring objection to the 
claims of Politics to assume the rank of a true science 
is the confessedly immature and imperfectly developed 
character of the component or preparatory studies, 
apart from which, in their combination with each 
other, the study of Politics cannot be pursued. It has 



16 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

already been noticed that the complex and composite 
nature of political studies is of itself a presumption 
against the facility, if not against the possibility, of 
ever imparling to those studies the rigorous certainty 
essential to Science. But this presumption is greatly 
increased, by the fact that in such broad but indis- 
pensable preparatory studies — confessedly of a scientific 
aspect — as Ethics, Economics, and Jurisprudence, there 
are to be found only the very smallest number of un- 
controverted propositions. And even as to the logical 
methods applicable in each branch of knowledge no 
generally assented-to decisions have yet been accepted. 
There is thus afforded to the sceptically-minded a 
wide opening for treating as unscientific a study which, 
like that of Politics, must be built up on conclusions 
yet to be established in those other regions of know- 
ledge, but none of which are as yet established with a 
certainty which is beyond debate. Nevertheless, if it 
be admitted that those component studies are capable 
of being placed on a strictly scientific foundation, and 
only wait for longer time and attention to assume 
scientific exactness, at least as much may be claimed 
for Politics, and the composite study may advance in 
logical perfection at an equal rate with the elementary 
studies. 

The general result of these considerations is that 
there are a variety of solid reasons which account not 
only for the reputation acquired by Politics of being an 
inherently unscientific study, but also for the study 
itself having advanced only a very short way towards 
scientific completeness. But most or all of these 
reasons have been seen to be of a kind which hold out 



NATURE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 17 

a good promise for the future, and thereby afford an 
ample encouragement to the use of a strictly logical 
method in political investigations, and to the attempt 
to create a scientific structure of ever-increasing com- 
pleteness in this region as well as in others more 
familiarly associated with the name of Science. 

A science need not be built on universal, nor even 
upon general, propositions ; and partial, particular, or 
probable premises may justify conclusions, drawn with 
logical correctness, which may be a firm basis for 
action. Where truths are by their nature restricted in 
time and place, or where evidence is yet lacking to 
demonstrate their actual generality, the assemblage of 
such truths will carry with it a fragmentary and hypo- 
thetical character which may to some seem incompatible 
with the rigid demands of Science. But where the in- 
vestigator himself proceeds in strict accordance with the 
severest logical requirements, conducting his ratioci- 
nation with the utmost precision, and distinguishing at 
all points the possible or probable from the certain, the 
universal or general from the particular, and proof from 
plausibility or mere conjecture, it matters little what 
name is given to the branch of enquiry concerned. It 
lacks no one of the essential elements and recommen- 
dations of the best and earliest-established of the 
physical sciences. Its terms are submitted to the same 
process of definition, its subject-matter to a like arrange- 
ment into groups and classes, genera and species, and 
the resulting propositions are reached by a course of 
reasoning as logically irrefutable. 

There are, indeed, certain plain indications that the 
study of Politics is already, even by practical states- 



18 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

men;, being placed on a platform of far higher scientific 
exactness than ever before. 

One of these indications is the large and dis- 
criminating use made of statistics. The collection and 
due use of statistics belong to very modern times; and 
owing to popular prejudices and social obstacles — such, 
for instance^ as still exist in England with regard to 
the collection of ao-ricultural and relioious statistics — 
they have not yet received anything like the extension 
of which they are capable. Nevertheless, it has become 
the fashion for all the more advanced Governments to 
rival each other in the breadth, fullness, arrangement, 
and clearness of the numerical information they obtain 
on all the groups of national facts which are suscep- 
tible of being tabulated in a systematic shape. These 
tables of statistics are periodically furnished by the 
Government, not only for purposes of contemplated 
legislation, but independently of all thought of imme- 
diate use. The fallacious use to which purely numeri- 
cal facts can be put, with only too seductive a show of 
plausibility, is beginning to be fullj^ acknowledged and 
guarded against. But the assurance that the regis- 
tered number of births, deaths, and marriages, within 
a given period and area, as well as the periodical 
records of crime and disease, and, even more obviously, 
the tabulated increase or decrease of commerce, shipping, 
and manufactures of different sorts, may serve to point 
to the presence of general laws — that is, of permanent 
sequences of cause and effect — is a sufficient justification 
of the labour and expense involved in obtaining the 
severally-relevant statistics. The comparison between 
the numerical results obtained at one time and place 
and another, and between those presented in different 



KATURE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 19 

countries, is becoming a political method increasing in 
prevalence and repute. In many quarters, indeed, the 
value of purely numerical estimates has been much 
exaggerated, and its peculiar liability to error, when 
made a basis of political reasoning, has been too much 
ignored. But when its limits of application are duly 
recognised, and care is taken to distinguish legal and 
political causes from those which are purely ethical 
or sociological, the study and use of statistics must be 
regarded as a most valuable ally, and an unmistakable 
proof of the scientific character of political studies. 

Akin to the token which the enlarged use of statistics 
affords of the growing recognition of Politics as a 
true science, is the ever increasing disposition, at the 
present day, to await, at any political crisis, whether 
legislative or administrative, the result of a patient 
examination of evidence as to the state of the facts and 
the previous history of the question. 

It is now the practice in the more advanced countries 
to take, in the path of serious political change, no step 
which seems to be other than the next step onward in 
a course which has become habitual, without first nomi- 
nating, by one process or another, competent persons 
to conduct a critical examination and to deliberate 
and report upon the matter. The most searching 
powers are often entrusted to this body of persons to 
enable them to inform themselves not only as to all 
the interests, in their several proportions, to be affected 
by the new policy, but as to the history of the general 
policy pursued in the past, and occasionally even as 
to the practice in other countries. 

It often, indeed, happens that after a laborious 
investigation, lasting for months or even for years, the 



20 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

popular interest in the once-advocated policy is found 
to be exhausted, or diverted into new directions, and 
the thought of new legislation is abandoned, and a 
voluminous, costly, and invaluable report cast on one 
side. Such are among the inevitable accidents which 
retard the progress of Government. 

But what is of importance to notice in this place is 
that the growing disposition to consult past and sur- 
rounding facts before inaugurating change belongs to 
the strictly scientific habit of mind ; and if it is true 
that much laborious investigation seems for the time 
to be thrown away, yet it seldom happens that com- 
j)licated and far-reaching changes are encountered with- 
out the assistance of a previous impartial and deliberate 
enquiry of the kind here adverted to. The scientific 
method, in Politics as elsewhere, is slowly and surely 
getting the better of the empiric. 

It will serve to throw some light on the scientific 
aspect of political studies if some attention is bestowed 
on the several writers who, at different periods and in 
different countries, have endeavoured to elucidate the 
subject by formal treatises. These treatises — so far as 
they have survived — are not numerous,— a phenomenon 
w^hich of itself is some indication that a theoretical 
handling of the problems of Government is not a popular 
occupation either for authors or readers. But whether 
this be so or not, so far as past literary experience goes, 
it certainly seems to be the case that the reflective or 
self-conscious condition of mind which alone admits of 
theoretical dissertations on Politics, as well as on other 
matters, is itself the pi^oduct of a combination of par- 
tially accidental circumstances. For instance, no such 
treatise has ever appeared in the entire absence of press- 



NATUEE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 21 

ing political problems, everywhere reckoned to be at 
once difficult and important. Nor have such writings 
emerged in countries depressed under the hand of a 
simple and irresistible despotism ; nor, again, in times 
and places disturbed by the actual presence of revolu- 
tion, or even of violent and systematic change. 

Such treatises, indeed, are the expression of far 
more than the casual opinions of an individual specu- 
lator. They are the outcome of the national needs and 
instincts. They often register the conclusions of more 
or less distinctly organised schools of thought. Their 
language can generally be traced, either in the way of 
cause or of effect, in the political oratory, diplomatic 
and state documents, written laws, or popular litera- 
ture of the hour. They thus act as the most precious, 
because the most unconscious, sort of historical monu- 
ments. 

For the present purpose, however, they are mainly 
noticeable, first as substantiating the truth that there 
is a veritable Science of Politics, and then as illustrating 
the special difficulties which the cultivation of that 
science has to contend with. 

It is worth while to make a selection, however arbi- 
trary, of the leading political writers who in ancient and 
modern times have trea.ted the subject in a systematic 
way, and to determine how far the shortcomings of 
these treatises were due to fortuitous circumstances, 
and what was the contribution made by each in succes- 
sion to the elaboration of a true Science of Politics. 

The writers on Politics who on these grounds may 
be fitly enumerated are the following : 

1. Plato and Aristotle. 

2. Cicero, Plutarch, and the historical writers of 
the early Roman Empire. 



22 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS 

3. Macliiavelli ; Hooker ; Bacon. 

4. The Schools of the English Revolution. — The 
Declaration of Rights ; Hobbes ; Locke ; Burke. 

5. The School of the American War of Inde- 
pendence. — The Declaration of Independence; the 
Federalist. 

6. The School of the Trench Revolution. — Mon- 
tesquieu ; the Declaration of the Rights of Man : 
Thomas Paine. 

7. The Positivist School. — Auguste Comte. 

8. The English Utilitarians. — Bentham ; the Mills ; 
John Austin ; Sir G. C. Lewis. 

1. The warmest admirers of Plato will not claim for 
his ' Republic/ or — if it be genuine, as Mr. Grote, at 
least, concludes it to be — his ' Laws/ the character of 
a treatise on Political Science. Plato indeed availed 
himself of the political phenomena everywhere con- 
spicuously present before the eyes and minds of his 
readers, and of the active spirit of political curiosity 
which those phenomena generated. In the ' Laws ' 
directly political objects w^ould seem to be the end 
in view; but even here the main notion -is that of 
advice or aspiration, and not that of research or exact 
demonstration ; and the objects in view relate to indi- 
vidual reforms rather than to systematic construction 
or re-construction. Indeed, Plato's writings, though 
not without their suggestiveness on many points of 
great importance to the statesman — such as education 
and the mutual relation of classes — belong properly to 
the literary department of ' Utopias.' Sir G. C. Lewis, 
in his 'Methods of Observation and Reasoning on 
Politics,' has devoted a special section to the con- 



AEISTOTLE. 23 

sideratioii of this subject ; and the invention of such 
political ideas is sometimes of real logical service, by 
furnishing a comprehensive framework for tlie joining 
together of a number of hypotheses. But while aspira- 
tions, counsels, and hypotheses no doubt hold a place 
in political discussion, they are, at the most, only the 
complements of the science, and not its essence. 

To Aristotle and his political treatises, — especially 
to the lost one, which dealt with the constitutions of 
nearly 200 Greek cities, — a very different kind of im- 
portance attaches. The backward condition of the 
physical sciences in his day prevented Aristotle, — as, 
even in comparatively modern times, it prevented 
Bacon, — from rigidly applying inductive methods to 
ethical enquiries. Nevertheless, the comprehensiveness 
of application which belonged to these methods was 
fully apprehended by the earlier philosopher ; and he 
set an example of inexhaustible value in the courage 
and consistency of purpose with which he followed out 
true methods to what he concluded to be their legiti- 
mate results. There were several reasons, however, 
which rendered the political investigations of Aristotle 
rather tentative and partial in their results than final 
and conclusive. 

It is true that, by iiristotle's time, not only had a 
vast number of Grecian communities passed through, 
externally at least, all the main vicissitudes which sepa- 
rate absolute despotism from democracy of as liberal 
a type as was possible in those ages, but also there 
were conspicuously presented to every thoughtful mind 
the alternative constitutions of the Kingdom of Macedon 
and of the Empires of the East. The recently termi- 



24 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Bated struggle between Athens and Sparta had, while 
it lasted (as appears abundantly in Thucydides), stimu- 
lated incessant comparisons between the very different 
institutions of the rival States ; and the orations of the 
great orators had, at a later date, accustomed the 
Grecian mind to calculate what would be gained and 
what lost by submission to the claims and encroach- 
ments of Philip of Macedon. Furthermore, it was, 
of course, vastly in Aristotle's favour that deductive 
logic and the practice of dialectic, in Plato's hands and, 
more systematically, in his own, had very recently 
undergone an unprecedented expansion ; and that he 
himself had, by his physical investigations and accu- 
mulated collections and recorded observations of all 
sorts, laid the indispensable basis of an inductive logic 
capable of an unlimited reach of application. 

Thus the way w^as undoubtedly well prepared for 
the construction of a genuine Science of Politics ; and 
it was inevitable that Aristotle, after applying his 
newly systematised critical method to the simpler 
relationships of man as a member of society, should 
proceed to emploj^ an equally rigid method of enquiry 
to the relationships of man as a subject of Government 
and a member o£ the complex organism entitled a 
State. But Aristotle must have been prevented from 
exhibiting the Science of Politics in an adequately 
finished form by certain distinct obstacles even had the 
habit of applying strict logical methods to ethical 
topics been then as familiar as it has of late been made 
by the increased attention bestowed on physical studies 
as a sequel to the vast discoveries and inventions of 
modern times. 

(1.) In the first place, the diffused existence and 



GREECE IN ARISTOTLE'S TIME. 25 

public recognition of slavery must have gone far to 
confuse the minds of even the clearest thinkers, and to 
prevent them from discriminating how far this insti- 
tution was a casual result of certain fluctuating causes, 
and how far it was a necessary, permanent, and universal 
characteristic of human society. The consequence of 
this confusion or doubt must have been to impair the 
clearness of vision with which the scientific observer 
would contemplate all problems relating to personal 
liberty, and even, to speak more generally, all human 
rights of a purely moral kind. It will be seen later 
on that each of the leading political revolutions which 
have subsequently taken place has, by bringing into 
relief the fact of some class of human rights being 
habitually violated, given a renewed impetus to the 
study of theoretic Politics, and brought about some 
important accession to the Science in its systematic 
form. 

(2.) In the second place, the size of the States of 
(Ireece, — even when it reached beyond the confines of a 
single city, — was so small, that even under the most 
popular Government the need for representation, in the 
modern sense, was scarcely felt. Not only in Attica, 
were all males of full age out of every city entitled to 
attend the public assembly and bound to serve in rota- 
tion as jurymen in the Courts of Law, but so large a pre- 
ponderance of the numerous members of the Assembly 
and of the Jury panels were close at hand and could 
attend in person, that the main difficulty of modern 
politics, occasioned by vastness of territory and de- 
centralisation, was not appreciated to an extent which 
called for scientific recognition. Representation, indeed, 
hi the form of agency, can be traced in many institu- 



26 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

tions, as for instance in the Amphictyonic Council^ in 
the management of certain international festivals, and 
in the conduct of federative alliances. But the mere 
fact of occasional recourse being had to the machinery 
of representation differs widely from the habitual use 
of representation as the main instrumentality for the 
support of the very fabric of Government. It was not 
till the doctrines of human equality and of individual 
right had to be deferred to, in connexion with extended 
areas of territory and an equable diffusion of territory, 
that the subject could take the place in all political 
enquiries which it occupies at this date. It needed, in 
fact, the experience supplied by the enormous breadth 
of the Boman Empire, by the organisation of the Chris- 
tian Church, and by the essential character and usages 
of Feudalism, to prepare the world to attribute to the 
problems of representation their true place in any 
scheme of scientific Politics. 

(8.) In the third place, the economic conditions of 
the States in the midst of which Aristotle lived, upon 
which alone his political experience must needs have 
been founded, were such as to exclude the consideration 
of the problems which, for statesmen in the present 
day, are at once the most important and the most 
arduous of those they have to grapple with. This class 
of problems relates to providing for a vast pauper popu- 
lation ; to adjusting the principle of political equality 
to the fact of an unequal distribution of wealth ; and, 
in a word, to maintaining the unity and integrity of the 
State amidst the dislocating and centrifugal influences 
of an intense struggle for existence at a variety of 
points, and especially at the extremities, of the body 
corporate. 



NATUKE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 27 

In the political communities known to Aristotle, it 
was not possible that — apart from the slave class — 
wealth should be a.s unequally distributed as in modern 
times ; and from all that is known of those com- 
munities it appears that the corresponding political 
problems did not press upon the attention of statesmen. 
No doubt there were great differences of wealth inci- 
dent to the various professions^ trades, and industrial 
occupations ; and there was abundant opportunity, by 
saving money, or by accumulating it as capital and 
investing it productively, to anticipate the modern 
distinctions between the leisured and luxurious citizen 
and the citizen actively engaged in producing or 
manipulating wealth. To what extent the accumu- 
lation of capital through the medium of banks, com- 
panies, loan societies, and the like, was possible in the 
ancient world is an interesting question which belongs 
to the department of antiquarian or, at least, historical 
research. But, making the utmost allowance for the 
presence of monetary and circulating expedients the 
true character and extent of which we can only 
conjecture, it is impossible that anything can have 
found place in the older world corresponding to the 
scale on which capital is, in modern States, concen- 
trated, accumulated, and assiduously transferred from 
investment to investment. 

Thpct no parallel in these respects exists between 
the circumstances of ancient and modern States is 
sufl&ciently proved by a mere glance at the enormous 
monetary transactions which the industrial, commercial, 
and even military enterprises of modern times pre- 
suppose. The spent capital commemorated in gigantic 
national debts ; the past and current expenditure on 



28 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

railway and telegraph communication; the contri- 
butions to joint-stock adventures for every class of 
engineering and mercantile undertaking; as well as 
the enormous amount of corporate property^ circulating 
or hoarded, represented by the shipping trade and by 
international exports and imports ; not to mention the 
national resources diverted, in all the leading States, to 
the organisation, in peace as well as in war, of the Army 
and Navy ; — these are a series of economical pheno- 
mena some of which, almost within the memory of 
living men, have reached inordinate proportions, and 
each of which has no equivalent before the sixteenth or 
seventeenth century of the present era. 

But it is not the mere existence of such facts, 
or their portentous magnitude, which constitutes the 
difference between the political materials of the modern 
and the ancient world. The real difference is that in 
modern States population keeps increasing fully in pro- 
portion to, — and, in some States, in a degree out of all 
proportion to — the growth of wealth, while no natural 
machinery exists either for ensuring an equable dis- 
tribution of the new wealth, or even for preventing it 
from being massed together in a very few hands. It 
requires the utmost administrative sagacity and energy 
as well as legislative inventiveness on the part of 
statesmen to remedy the consequences of this unequal 
diffusion of vast wealth, and, as far as may be, to pro- 
mote a more equal diffusion. Questions relating to 
taxation, pauperism, inheritance and succession, entails, 
mercantile partnerships, bankruptcy, and free trade, 
have all to be handled in view of these pressing require- 
ments ; and nothing but the sudden spring and develop- 
ment of manufactures, together with the ever fresh 



GEEECE IN ARISTOTLE'S TIME. 29 

occupation of territory in America and the Australian 
Colonies, could have prevented the occurrence of disas- 
trous famines, and revolutions, and other like adver- 
sities, which it is the main purpose of the statesman to 
keep at a distance. 

In Aristotle's time wealth was, undoubtedly, un- 
equally diffused, and checks to population, both natural 
and artificial, abounded. But it was not till the New 
World had been discovered, mechanical contrivances 
inordinately expanded, public and international credit 
established, and innumerable devices for providing 
media of exchange invented, that the corresponding 
political problems could have come to light, or at 
least have attained the prominence they now have. 

(4.) In the fourth place, the scattered extent of terri- 
tory subject to the leading modern States has of itself 
given rise to two classes of political problems of the 
highest degree of importance, and yet of a distinctly 
novel kind. These problems relate to Local Government 
and to the Government of Dependencies. It needs no 
comment to show the importance of both these topics, 
the place they both occupy in modern legislative dis- 
cussions and administrative schemes, and the absence 
of anything which can fairly be said to correspond to 
them in the political world open to the observation 
of Aristotle. 

To Aristotle, the primary if not the absorbing topic 
was the form of Government. It is to be noted that 
the smaller the political community in numerical 
extent the more pressing, — in appearance if not in 
reality, — is this consideration; because, the relative 
proportion of the actual administrators to the numbers 
of the population being greater as the aggregate mass 



80 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

of the population is smaller, the question as to the 
most fitting number of administrators is a more sig- 
nificant and pressing one. Where the disproportion 
between the administrators and the numbers of the 
population is very great, as in the leading modern 
States, it matters less whether the numbei of the ad- 
ministrators be great or small. In this way one element, 
at least, of calculation in estimating the value of forms 
of Government has lost the importance it possessed in 
Aristotle's day. At the present time, — as will be seen 
later on, — it is impossible to oppose, with the sharpness 
of distinction which Greek experience admitted of, the 
monarchical to the oligarchical or, again, to the 
democratical form of government. Modern experience 
has shown that tyranny and absolutism are not 
incompatible with the forms of democratical govern- 
ment; and that under monarchical forms political and 
jDersonal freedom may find adequate protection. It is 
discovered that new constitutional devices of a kind 
undreamed of in Aristotle's day, and which may be 
applied under any external form of government, are 
needed to withstand the inroads of injustice, corruption, 
and anarchy. 

In this way, again, the Science of Politics could 
not have been elaborated by Aristotle, with all his 
logical perspicacity, his knowledge, and his prescience, 
simply for want of materials out of which to form it. 
Greek experience was widely diversified, but always in 
a narrow field and in the midst of exceptional and 
transient conditions. Greek communities were small, 
with a large slave population, the mieans of subsistence 
being easily supplied, and the main political problem 
being that of the rival advantages of placing the supreme 



NATUEE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 31 

power in the hands of one, of a few, or of many pur- 
porting ostensibly to be identical with all. 

2. The next epoch in the history of Political Science 
is that of the historical, philosophical, and ethical writers 
of the last days of the Roman Republic and the early 
years of the Roman Empire. To this class belong such 
writers as Cicero, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, and 
(incidentally) the Jurists of the times of the Antonines. 

It is more difficult to characterise the political 
speculation of this age than that of the age of Aris- 
totle, because no single representative treatise, — not 
excepting Cicero's lately recovered work on the 
' Republic,' — occupies any such place as the ' Politics ' 
of Aristotle. But this very silence and absence of 
speculative writers on politics is in the highest degree 
instructive. In the world of the Roman Empire there 
could be no question of constitutional change otherwise 
than through the avenue of revolution. All policy was 
concerned with keeping things as they were ; that is, 
with defending the frontiers of the Empire, preventing 
organised revolution in the army or anarchy in the 
provinces, keeping in restraint the horde of slaves of 
many nationalities, providing food for the metropolis, 
and establishing satisfactory relations between the 
reigning Emperor and those who were, or might prove, 
competitors for his throne. Eor years together the 
only acts of policy strictly so called, — excepting the 
extension of the rights of citizenship by Caracalla, — 
related to comprehensive improvements in the system 
of administration, such as took place successively 
nnder Augustus, Constantino, Diocletian, and finally 
Justinian. 



32 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

This abeyance of political objects which is the 
characteristic of the Empire was compatible with a 
professedly high standard of political ethics, with a 
rigid regard for, and logical perception of, individual 
legal claims, and with sound and ingeniously contrived 
methods of provincial administration. But there was, 
at heart, a radical discrepancy between the principles 
of personal morality which, in connexion with novel 
theories of man's nature and destiny, were disclosing 
themselves in some parts of the Empire, and the 
universal oppression under which the slaves and the 
provincials were all, in a greater or less degree, suffer- 
ing. It would have been the first aim of a genuine 
Political Science to trace how far these evils were 
connected with the existing system of government, or 
how far they could be removed by political reforms. 
But no such Science was forthcoming, or could be 
forthcoming. The only practical choice was between 
absolutism and anarchy ; and such thinkers and writers 
as appeared were only free to express themselves under 
the cloak of satiric poems, cynical history, and critical 
biographies of the heroes of old. 

It would be untrue, however, to conclude that 
the time of the transition from a republican to an 
imperial system of government, and of the establishment 
of the Empire, contributed nothing to advance the 
theoretical treatment of Politics. In many ways the 
reverse was the case ; and, under a variety of disguises, 
and assisted by the rapid development in some directions 
of the Art of Politics, the corresponding Science was 
making achievements for which the modern world con- 
tinues to be, in an increasing rather than in a diminishing 
degree, a debtor. 



THE EOMAN ExMPIRE. 33 

The difficulties of administration as applied over an 
almost unlimited area ; the problems presented by the 
necessity of preserving order and contentment as w^ell 
as, if it might be, promoting prosperity among subjects 
of divers nationalities, creeds, and political antecedents ; 
the arduous questions relating to taxation and military 
service, as well as those due to the need for organising 
agriculture and land-tenure in a way likely to favour 
production and prevent famines ; were all obviously 
present, if not to the mind of the Emperor himself, at 
least to that of his more competent advisers, on whom 
the safety and tranquillity of the Empire depended from 
moment to moment. Add to this that the silent effect 
of the even and generally impartial administration of 
justice, based on an inimitable system of equitable 
private right — a system developed with a logical pre- 
cision which scarcely knows a parallel — was constantly 
discovering the nature and the necessity of stable poli- 
tical institutions. Municipal creations and arrange- 
ments, again, were relieving the local organs from the 
pressure of the central mass ; and it was only when the 
central authority unduly encroached, by way of taxation 
and enforced services of all sorts, on the local bodies, 
that the dissolution of the Empire was threatened by 
causes quite independent of external aggression. 

It is not only that, through the experience of the 
political vicissitudes which the history of the fortunes 
of the Eoman Empire supplies, political knowledge has 
been increased and rendered serviceable for the instruc- 
tion of future ages, but a more scientific view of the 
conditions of all good government was inevitably im- 
pressing itself on the thought of mankind. During 
these ages, indeed, it happened that most of the conscious 



34 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

intellectual energy of the world was absorbed in Christian 
controversy and speculation; and the very nature of 
the prevalent governmental absolutism was inconsistent 
with an indulgence in unrestricted political discussion. 
But even from a political point of view the thought of 
the age was not wholly wasted. Politics were almost 
inextricably involved in the very language employed, 
in the sentiments entertained, and in the reasoning 
adduced, in the course of the more prevalent avocations 
and studies. Even the Fathers of the Church, while 
contrasting the secular society around with the new 
moral kingdom the claims of which they were engaged 
in recommending, talked political science without know- 
ing it. The Emperors, in the Eecitals prefixed to their 
laws, confessed the nature of the two-fold problems 
presented by the Church and the exigencies of their 
enormous State. The lawyers, in their most technical 
language on private right, could not avoid admitting or 
rejecting dominant political theories. In fact, though 
the period was one of political being and suflPering 
rather than of conscious thinking, yet an incubating 
process was going on which, after the confusions and 
the sleep of ages, was destined to produce a not un 
worthy progeny. 

3. Historical investigation has long ago eradicated 
the notion that the ages which intervened between the 
fall of Rome and the fall of Constantinople could only 
be denoted by such images as sleep and death. But so 
much, nevertheless, is true, that it was not before the 
definite reconstruction of Europe after the shock of the 
collision between the tribes of the North and the Empire 
of the South that Political Science could recover its place 



THE CHRISTIAN CHUECH. 35 

in the consciousness of mankind. The notion of 
territorial sovereignty was partly introduced and partly 
reinforced by three contemporaneous institutions or 
influences : — the Churchy succeeding to the territorial 
claims of the Imperial Government at Rome ; the Muni- 
cipalities, which survived the ruin of what was more 
brittle or ephemeral than themselves, and persisted in 
maintaining a well-understood relation between public 
oflice and corporate property; and Feudalism, — inclining 
either to a mere military device or a mere form of 
tenure, according as it borrowed more from a Teutonic 
or a Eoman source. These institutions, operating in 
the generation of fresh facts, and as influences on the 
minds and imagination of men, preserved a clear field 
for a system of territorial government the limitation 
of which was determined by geographical, linguistic, 
military, and even mere diplomatic and dynastic causes. 
The history of the Holy Eoman Empire, espe- 
cially in its relation to the Church of Eome, is the 
history of the way in which the process of delimitation 
between State and State was carried out in detail, in 
subservience to the preponderant idea that the German 
Empire was a true perpetuation of the Eoman Empire 
and that there was only one State, as there was only 
one Church, in the Western world. If it was the Church 
which, in concert with other institutions, had preserved 
the territorial element in the existence of the State, it 
was again the same Church, which, in a reflex way and 
by the reaction it called forth on every side against its 
own usurpations, helped to sharpen and define the 
notion of the political integrity and independence of a 
true State. The mercantile cities of Northern Italy 
were among the first to draw distinct political advantage 



36 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

from the rivalries between the Church and the Empire ; 
and while the theoretical battle of Investments was 
being fought, as it were, in the gorgeous but unreal 
cloud- w^orld of Popes and Emperors, the genuine notions 
of political right, duty, independence, self-government, 
representation, and corporate action were being noise- 
lessly but triumphantly evolved by the tradesmen, 
manufacturers, and merchants of the Italian republics. 

The writings of Machiavelli, both as a patriotic 
historian and as a scientific politician, are significant of 
this new and memorable epoch at its culminating point. 
In fact, the great author seems almost conscious himself 
that he is called to prescribe for an era of decline. No 
one knew better than he that it was not by fraudulent 
diplomacy or astute craftiness that Florence had attained 
her incomparable renown. He no doubt felt that the 
era of private liberty and of political independence for 
Italian cities had really passed away ; and that only by 
personal adroitness in the ruler could the enemies of 
his country, whether French or Roman, be temporarily 
kept at a distance. Therefore the Political Science of 
Machiavelli must be sought in his History of his own 
city ; his Political Art in his ' Prince.' 

It must be observed that the conscious prosecution 
of political studies in Northern Italy in the fifteenth 
century was due to more general causes than the ap- 
pearance of a race of educated statesmen, called into 
existence by an oligarchical constitution under repub- 
lican forms — a race of which Machiavelli was the most 
conspicuous type. There were, indeed, contemporary 
statesmen of no mean calibre in England and in 
France ; there were free self-governing cities scattered 
throughout every part of the Western world, and the 



MACHIAVELLI. 37 

Ilaiiseatic League was scarcely distinguishable in any 
particular from a sovereign and independent State. 
But in Italy alone all the conditions converged for the 
study of Politics according to deductive and inductive 
methods. These conditions were, the variety of ex- 
perience which the fortunes of all the Italian republics 
supplied ; the close neighbourhood to, and assiduous 
contact with, States differently governed ; the legal and 
historical studies fostered by the great Italian Univer- 
sities ; the incessant diplomatic activity which charac- 
terised the relations of the Eepublic with Foreign 
Powers; and lastly, the political reflectiveness kept in 
constant use by the internal and never ceasing conflicts 
between the popular and the oligarchical parties in the 
towns. 

The disruption of Feudalism, in the case of all the 
countries in which it had prevailed, was attended by a 
br-each in the long subsisting relations between the 
King, the Aristocracy, and the People. It was of the 
essence of Feudalism to unite these persons and classes 
toorether in the well-understood and familiar relations 
comprised in reciprocal services and in the tenure or 
the occupation of the soil. As Feudalism collapsed, 
these relations were disturbed or destroyed. In some 
countries, as in France, the King profited at the expense 
of the nobles and the people ; in other countries, as in 
Germany, the subordinate feudal lords profited at the 
expense of their feudal superiors ; while in England the 
people at one time, by the help of the King, prevailed 
against the nobles, and at another time, by the help of 
the nobles, prevailed against the King. There needed a 
new fusion of classes, or rather, a new ground of political 



38 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

union, to take the place of obsolete facts and a decaying 
faith. And, so soon as revolution against the subsisting 
order was threatened, political theory came to the aid 
of society, and the doctrines of Divine Right on the one 
hand, and of the Social Contract on the other, were 
brandished with all the energy which belongs to an era 
of active social change. 

Sir Thomas More's Utopia occupies the same kind 
of place in reference to later political speculation in 
England that Plato's 'Eepublic' occupied towards the 
^ Politics ' of Aristotle. Like the earlier poem of ' Piers 
Ploughman,' the Utopia traced certain confessed evils 
to their easily recognised causes, and, with more or 
less outspoken freedom, demanded reform. But such 
utterances are rather of the nature of bitter laments or 
pious aspirations, dictated by the spectacle of social 
collapse, than a comprehensive and patient survey of 
the whole political field, such as belongs to science. 

The struggles of Elizabeth's reign between the 
secular State and the mutually-opposed religious parties, 
which were endeavouring to divert to their own pur- 
poses the national forces, prepared the ground for a 
thorough theoretical discussion of one great department 
of Politics, the relation of the State to the religious 
beliefs of its component members. The treatise of 
Hooker on ' Ecclesiastical Polity ' marks not merely an 
important stage in national literature, but also a freshly 
discovered capacity in English thought to refer legal 
and political institutions to their necessary origin in 
human and common social needs. The transition 
from an age of mere complaint, remonstrance, and 
recrimination, to an age of argument based on admitted 
premises of the most general kind was, in truth. 



HOOKER. 39 

effected by the practical intelligence urgently called for 
to settle all the constitutional and ecclesiastical ques- 
tions of Elizabeth's day. Among these questions, even 
that of the Queen's title to the throne was involved, 
and still more that of her leading prerogatives. 

The recent and still progressing reformation of reli- 
gion, the increasingly rapid dissolution of the ancient 
social ties which bound class to class, the dawning of a 
new literary era, the speculative and adventurous spirit 
due to the novel prospects opening to commerce and 
discovery in the New World, formed a cluster of pheno- 
mena which were too distinct and portentous not to 
have their reflection in the mirror of Politics and to 
supply legislative and administrative problems of a 
wholly new order of importance. One and another of 
these problems was courageously grappled with at once 
— such as the poor-law system, the law relating to 
fraudulent debtors, the constitutional aspect of mono- 
polies, and, more especially, the relations of the State 
in its secular character, as well as those of the National 
Church, to independent religious communities within 
the realm and to Churches having their centre of 
loyalty and allegiance outside it. 

The discussion of these problems was, for the most 
part, conducted in a piecemeal way, with reference 
either to the pressing necessities of the moment or to 
what were believed to be well-established and long prac- 
tised usages of the English Government. But, as in all 
great crises, when competent statesmen are at the head 
of affairs, the practice went beyond any known prece- 
dents, and new principles were evolved under the guise of 
a more logical development of old ones. Thus Hooker's 
great work not only went far to ascertaia the past and 



40 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

existiDg relations, civil and religious, of a State Churcli 
to schismatic persons and corporations, but furnished a 
fresh starting-point for the conduct of the controversy 
in future times. So w^ith Jeremy Taylor's ' Liberty of 
Prophesying.' The question is argued in view of a prac- 
tical emergency. The basis of the right of free speech 
is laid in what are believed to be admitted Biblical, 
ecclesiastical, and constitutional principles. But in 
this open citation of implicit dogmas there was con- 
tained far more than a mere registration of prevalent 
ideas. The wise and erudite author was compelled by 
the exigencies of argument to trespass beyond the 
strict limits ju-stified by his own authorities ; and the 
consequence was that the ^ Liberty of Prophesying' 
was in fact an anachronism, only to become adapted to 
the times when principles identically the same were 
re-asserted by Milton in his ^ Areopagitica,' or at a still 
later date, by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his essay on 
' Liberty.' 

In the meantime Francis Bacon was laying the 
foundations of a true inductive method of reasoning, 
and heralding the brilliant future which lay before it. 
For the moment, indeed, the physical sciences were 
alone comprehended in the philosopher's ken. But the 
method announced admitted of no limitation in the 
subject-matter, except such as must come from a con- 
fined experience or defective means and instruments of 
observation. As to Politics, there were the further 
obstacles supplied by long fixed usage, and the general 
objections to all theorising which might dispose man- 
kind for easily entertaining projects of political change. 
But the appeal to strict logical methods made by Bacon, 
in every branch of enquiry which dealt with matters 



BACON. 41 

cognisable by the material senses, must have ushered in 
sooner or later a novel and organic reconstruction of 
political and ethical theories. The partial speculations 
of such men as Hooker and Jeremy Taylor co-operated 
in the same direction, while the remarkable events and 
needs of the hour prompted men's minds to demand a 
central basis of thought for their mainstay and con- 
solation amidst changes of incalculable magnitude. 

Thus, the impulse to strictly scientific investigation 
once being given, and the political and constitutional 
questions astir being of a kind to arouse all the best 
thought of the day, it needed but the situation, the 
theoretical assumptions, and the conduct of the Stuart 
Kings, to call forth the political philosophy of the early 
part of the seventeenth century. 

The leading political topic which dwarfed all others 
was that of the Prerogative of the Crown. Even so early 
as the reign of Edward IV., Chancellor Eortescue had 
been led by current events to discuss in his treatises 
' De Laudibus Legum Anglise ^ and ' De Monarchia,' the 
attributes of the English King, and his subjection to the 
law of the land, in contradistinction to the Imperial 
Sovereign as c ntemplated by the Civil Law. But, in 
that early day, speculative political thought was not ad- 
vanced enough to admit of the enunciation of principles 
broader than the partially settled maxims of the English 
Constitution. By the time of the Stuarts the political 
as well as the speculative world had undergone a 
notable transformation. For the purposes of the Courts 
of Law it was sufficient to argue from acknowledged 
usasres and decided cases that the Kino^ had or had not a 
right of raising money without the assent of Parliament, 
of maintaining a standing army, of granting mono- 



42 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

polies^ of suspending Acts of Parliament by proclamation, 
and of inflicting fines and imprisonment by the instru- 
mentality of Courts not known to the Common Law. 
But when such questions accumulate, it is a sign that 
more is in debate than mere controversies of uncertain 
right. Men's minds miust rest in some intelligible 
theory which can either bring into mutual harmony ex- 
isting facts or can introduce new facts capable of being 
placed on an unassailable foundation. It has been seen 
that through the experience, political and intellectual, 
of the reigns of the Tudors, men's minds were ripe for 
a purely theoretical solution of pending controversies ; 
and the main representative of the new era was 
Hobbes. 

4. Hobbes' intrinsic merit, in respect of the history 
of Political Science, was that, in contrast with all his 
eminent English predecessors who had handled special 
departments of Politics in a logical spirit, he addressed 
himself to discover and propound principles of the 
most comprehensive kinds, from which all doctrines 
then recognised as needful might be deductively in- 
ferred. The principles adduced by Hobbes were not 
barren truisms founded on a rancorous despondency or 
a pious optimism. They were based on a careful and 
accurate survey of the whole field of Government ; and 
every portion of the mechanism of Government, and 
each of its essential functions were regarded in the 
light of the central and dominating idea. Thus the 
foundations of a veritable political Science were for the 
first time surely laid ; and if the superstructure has not 
followed as rapidly as might have been hoped, it has 
been only because it needed the fresh discoveries result- 



HOBBES, GEOTIUS, SELDEN. 43 

ing from the later revolutionary movements in England, 
America, and France, to furnish the materials requisite 
for an adequate scientific development. 

It must be noticed, too, that in other directions and 
by other agencies the elements of a true political 
science were coming into relief during the reigns of 
Elizabeth and the Stuarts. The incidents of English 
maritime adventure led to assumptions in the narrow 
seas which, whatever their value — as contested by 
Denmark and Holland, at least — went far to sub- 
stantiate the notions of territorial sovereignty and of 
national independence. The untenable assumptions of 
extra-territorial maritime rights, defended by Selden and 
justly resisted by Grotius, drove the public conscience 
to criticise the nature of the relationship between State 
and State for some other purposes than (as heretofore) 
those of war alone. In the same way, the peculiar 
dynastic relations of James I. to the still distinct 
kingdoms of Scotland and England raised a congeries of 
legal questions bearing on the nationality of citizens of 
the two countries before and after the King's accession 
to the English throne. These questions, though primarily 
only of constitutional import, tended to popularise an 
enforce political doctrines as to the true and necessary 
situation of the citizen in the State to which he belonofs. 

Thus a series of influences were converging to 
bring every separate portion of the political machinery 
under critical review, not merely in order to test its 
condition and efficiency, but to determine its place and 
order in the whole system, and thereby to estimate the 
circumstances and wants of any and every State 
generically, as subjected to definite conditions, and not 
merely those of England at that time. 



44 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

There were certain special circnmstances wliicli 
conduced to impart to all the acts and events of the 
English Revolution (covering, under this term, the 
whole of the period between the accession of Charles I. 
and that of William III.) a peculiarly legal character. 
Among these circumstances may be noted the habit of 
theological controversy which was abroad ; the eminent 
lawyers of the stamp of Clarendon and Selden who 
took so prominent a part in the purely constitutional 
struggle ; the secondary influences of an expiring 
Feudalism which had at the first been based upon 
the strictly legal relationships implied in reciprocity of 
tenure and service ; and the fact that the revolution 
began in Parliament and not outside it, — which in- 
volved a precise technical assignment of the points of 
difference between the Crown and the Parliament, such 
as expressed itself in the Petition of Right, in the 
Grand Remonstrance, and, finally, in the Declaration 
of Rights. 

This straining after legal forms and legal justifi- 
cation is conspicuous throughout the whole history 
even of the Commonwealth, and was congenial to the 
minds of all the principal actors. It was thus not un- 
natural, even when the re-settlement under the Houses 
of Orange and Hanover had finally taken place, for the 
apologists of the Revolution to cast their arguments 
rather in a pedantically legal than a liberally political 
mould. In fact, the position of the Whigs of the 
Revolution (as Burke abundantly showed, in his 
'Appeal from the New Whigs to the Old,^ and else- 
where) was characteristically legal ; and in this they 
differed both from their more emotional opponents, the 
High Church devotees of the excluded dynasty, and 



LOCKE AND TEE SOCIAL CONTRACT. 45 

iTom the non-conformist radicals who were prepared to 
accept, — in a generation or two if not at that time, — 
the broadest interpretation of the maxim Salus Rei- 
jmblicce sitprema Lex. 

Filmer's defence of the Patriarchal basis of 
Monarchy, and Locke's repudiation of that basis by 
reference to a legal and subsisting contract between 
a monarch and his subjects, both rested, in the last 
analysis, on a gratuitous legal postulate : namely, that 
fathers have a legal claim to obedience on the part of 
their children, and that all agreements must be kept 
on both sides, or that breach on one side justifies 
breach on the other. 

It has been repeatedly pointed out, of late years, 
how insufficient were these legal metaphors to support 
the weight of argument cast upon them. Neverthe- 
less, their prevalence from the times of Locke to those 
of Blackstone, and in such various hands as those of 
Hume, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Burke, is a remark- 
able proof of the ease with which men's imagination — 
partly through indolence and partly through inadver- 
tence—accommodates itself to legal imagery. A similar 
and illustrative caution is supplied by the history, at 
one epoch after another, of the evolution of Christian 
doctrine. 

The notion of a ' Social Contract ' was unfortunate 
in every aspect, historical, ethical, and even legal ; and 
its only virtue was that it served as a convenient formula 
to express important and neglected truths. Historically, 
it postulated a primitive but imaginary condition of 
society in which a people and their designated rulers 
stood face to face with each other, and, after fairly con- 
templating all the circumstances, and the nature of the 



46 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

acts promised on each side, without misunderstanding, 
fear, or fraud, bound themselves and their descendants 
to all time. Ethically and legally there could be no 
more reason for keeping a contract than there is for 
loyalty on the part of the subjects, and good govern- 
ment on the part of the King, in the absence of any 
express or understood promises. Thus the notion of a 
contract, fictitious in itself, added nothing to the fact of 
obligation on either side, while it led to political con- 
fusion by withdrawing people's minds from the real 
grounds and moral foundation on which the reciprocal 
duties of the Governor and the Governed rest. 

5. The American Revolution which resulted in the 
birth of the United States, while it contained many 
new political elements, had in it much in common with 
the previous revolution in England. This is especially 
manifested in the appeal made at the outset, and again 
and again in public documents of constitutional signi- 
ficance, to legal principles supposed to be inherent in 
the English Constitution and to which it was alleged 
that the English Government, by imposing a Par- 
liamentary tax on the Colonies, was unfaithful. But 
for a period of some two hundred years the thirteen 
Colonies had been achieving, each for itself, an in- 
dependent political existence, by the help of their 
original charters, (which embodied many of the most 
cherished but hitherto unwritten doctrines of the 
English Constitution, in the same form in which they 
subsequently re-appeared in the Constitution of the 
United States,) of the English Common Law, and of 
their own administrative system, acting in harmony 
with the Eno^lish Parliament and the Government at 



THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 47 

home. Thus, when the moment of revolution came, 
the legal points at issue between the Colonies and 
the British Parliament were only a part of the main 
question. Another equally significant question was how 
far, and in what way, the Colonies could co-operate 
among themselves so as to present a united front, not 
only for purposes of physical resistance at the moment 
but for those of permanent political organisation. 

There had been temporary confederations of several 
of the Colonies for definite purposes on several occa- 
sions during the previous hundred years. But these 
coalitions implied no more than mutual temporary con- 
cessions for the purpose of securing joint and consistent 
action. So soon as a durable project was entertained 
of severing all the Colonies from their connection with a 
strong State bent on holding them fast, — or, as seemed 
likely, on recovering them at the earliest opportunity- 
some principles of conciliation must needs have been 
discovered which could go deeper than the disintegrating 
differences which accidentally separated, or tended to 
separate. Colony from Colony. The enthusiasm of the 
revolutionary war helped towards the acceptance and 
diffusion of such principles, though it was not without 
repeated trials and failures,^ — some of them only recently 
enacted and redressed, — that they became translated 
into a new Constitutional structure. Thus the broad 
and emphatic truisms of the Declaration of Independence 
must be read side by side with the new written Consti- 
tution in its successive forms, and are, in fact, its truest 
commentary, — especially when illustrated by the consti- 
tutional charters of the several Colonies. Among the 
greatest additions made to political experience by the 
American revolution, and recorded in the Constitution, 



48 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

are the doctrines, first, that a competent judicial 
authority is the proper and final test of the constitu- 
tional validity of a new law ; and secondly, that every 
people, when deliberately and solemnly appealed to, 
is competent to revise to any extent its own system of 
Government. 

At the time of the outburst of the American war, 
revolution implied federation, and federation implied 
revolution. The mode in which federation was alone 
possible in the circumstances of the American Colonies 
supplied a series of arduous problems, for the theo- 
retical as well as practical solution of which there 
existed or arose a class of statesmen who, taken 
altogether, have been for political sagacity and acumen 
without parallel in political history. If the writers in 
the ' Federalist ' and their worthy successors, who have 
critically examined and expounded every clause and 
almost every phrase and term in the American Con- 
stitution, have failed to construct a Science of Politics, 
it must be remembered that it was not their purpose to 
do so. Properly enough, they wrote for the emergencies 
and needs of their own country ; though it happens 
that according as, in the progress of civilisation, good 
institutions become increasingly prevalent, the con- 
ditions of good government tend to become identical 
everywhere, and he who writes for any one State writes 
for all. 

It is certain that the lessons to be learnt from the 
American school of politicians, especially in respect to 
the working of institutions on a Federal basis and 
scattered over an enormous breadth of territory, are by 
no means exhausted. Indeed, there is no Government 
the experience of which is more constantly cited in 



THE FEENCH KEVOLUTION. 49 

illustration of every species of political theory, and about 
the true nature and bearing of which more misappre- 
hensions are afloat. 

6. It might have been expected that such a cata- 
clysm as the first French revolution, directly affecting, 
as it did, the fortunes of so many countries and Govern- 
ments, would have had a conspicuous influence on the 
theoretical handling of all political topics. It needs 
but to read Burke's ' Reflections,' and to contrast them 
with Thomas Paine's more brilliant reply, to estimate 
the changed point of political vision effected by the 
events in France. Eousseau and Voltaire, and the school 
of the Encyclopedists generally, are usually referred 
to as having prepared men's minds for the Revolution 
and facilitated its course. It is rather the case that 
the appearance of this class of thinkers and writers 
was the first step in the Revolution itself. When once 
conscious thought was turned upon the institutions of 
the old Regime, they must have been peremptorily 
condemned. The ultimate revolt was successful, not 
merely because the whole people suffered and public 
justice was set at nought, but because the political 
institutions were one and all so rotten at the core that 
there was no rallying point round which the defenders 
of things as they were could assemble themselves to 
save the Constitution. There were, no doubt, a great 
number and variety of keenly appreciated interests ; 
but there was no common faith or loyalty. Thus the 
fall of the Bastille surely betokened the fall of the 
Monarchy; and, because the Monarchy was the Con- 
stitution, great was the fall of it. 

Hence the most notable political mark of what may 



50 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

be called the school of the French Revolution has been, 
on the one hand, an indifference to the teaching of 
experience, and, on the other, an undue sanguineness 
as to the mechanical influences of Constitutional forms. 
This is the worst side of the picture. The best side is, 
that the same school is eagerly receptive of schemes of 
political improvement, hopeful of the possibilities of 
human nature, and generally exempt from prejudice, 
or prepossession with fixed ideas. The result is that 
what is truly national in French politicians, having no 
natural root to adhere to, is apt to be narrow, exclusive, 
and selfish, though often concealed under a show of 
cosmopolitanism ; while in American, and, it may be 
said, in English politicians, what is national is a neces- 
sary condition of all political thought, and therefore 
implies no narrow-minded and irrational preference for 
any particular country, but recognises as the first duty 
of a State the obligation to contribute, with all other 
States, towards a central and common aim, to the 
accomplishment of which all human life tends. 

The secondary and indirect influences of the French 
E/evolution on political thought and knowledge have 
been more eflBcacious than the primary and direct. 
English political speculation, since the Revolution of 
1688, had been oscillating between a defence of what 
were held to be the principles of the Revolution, — 
which usually degenerated into a purely legal argu- 
ment proceeding from some assumed premises, true or 
not, — and vague dissertations on ideal forms of Govern- 
ment, constructed without reference to the nature of 
]nan as properly interpreted, or to the historical ante- 
cedents of the only States on whose behalf such hypo- 
thetical creations were devised. The lessons of the 



EPFECTS OF THE FRENCH EEVOLUTION. 51 

French Kevolution in its later stages, when construc- 
tive work was called for to fill the place of what was 
abolished, were serviceable to teach and drive home 
the truths, that there is no one form of Government or 
of political organisation which can at once be fitted to 
every people at any and every period ; that when a 
decided breach with the past has been made by a 
nation, it needs a tedious and, usually, lengthened 
experience for the people to become habituated to 
fresh institutions and to obtain for themselves the 
advantages of stable constitutional order; that, in 
the case of an hereditary monarchy, the dynastical 
pretensions of excluded members of the royal family 
interpose special obstacles in the way of comprehensive 
change, but that these obstacles decrease with the 
lapse of time; and finally, that the most volcanic 
upheaval of the outward structure and form of Govern- 
ment may still leave the hidden vices of a centralised 
administration, especially as conducted by a network 
of police, just where they were. 

These and similar lessons are, of course, only par- 
tially taught at present, but the contagious influence of 
popular institutions has been radiating to a wider and 
wider circle throughout the present century, and espe- 
cially since 1848. Even the most conservative and the 
most despotically governed States, as Austria, Prussia, 
and even Eussia, have submitted to the process of 
internal change which political events, wars, and legal 
reforms — as facilitated by the diffusion and popularity 
of the Code Napoleon — have contributed to bring about. 
A corresponding impulse has been given to the theo- 
retical study of the chief departments of political 
knowledge, such as Political Economy, abstract Juris- 



52 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

prudence. Social Ethics, and Constitutional as well as 
International Law. The novel attention directed to 
such studies as these is a sign and consequence of the 
ferment in action as well as in theory which has per- 
vaded European politics during the last thirty years ; 
and the proximate causes of this ferment must be 
sought for in the social and political disruption in 
France at the close of the last century. 

7. There has to be characterised one notable contri- 
bution to the Science of Politics in the present century, 
which in many respects recals the treatise of Aristotle, 
though it has the advantage of that treatise in being 
based on an additional experience, lasting over some 
2000 years, of political vicissitudes, and in being con- 
structed after the inductive method of reasoning in all 
its possible extensions had attained complete develop- 
ment. 

M. Auguste Comte clearly descried two leading 
truths, to which, as taken together and as tracked out 
with all their consequences, no suflBlcient justice was 
done by any previous writer. These truths were : — 
the one, that the constructive politics of the future 
must be based on the history of the past ; the other, 
that political science was a composite study and pre- 
supposed the complete apprehension of every other 
branch of science, beginning with the physical, such 
as astronomy, and ending with the moral, such as 
ethics and sociology. It is in the collocation of these 
two truths, and in the laborious and detailed illus- 
tration of the mode in which the new method ought 
to be conformed to, that M. Auguste Comte's charac- 
teristic contribution to the Science of Politics consists. 



AUGUSTS COMTE. 53 

There are, however, in his political treatises other fea- 
tures little less important than these. There is written 
on every line of them the assertion that the claims of 
order and of progress can be reconciled by the use of 
good political institutions ; but that these institutions 
can only be made to work duly and produce their legi- 
timate fruit by the use of a diffused system of educa- 
tion and continual moral discipline reaching to all 
classes of society and based on the most advanced 
knowledge of the day. If M. Comte has failed to com- 
plete the task he so grandly inaugurated, it has only 
been because the work was too great for a single man 
or for a single country. It is others, and not he, who 
upon these foundations have built wood, hay, and 
stubble. 

M. Comte's Treatises are the latest contribution to 
the Science of Politics in its true and comprehensive 
form as a fully reasoned out department of knowledge. 
But the present century, — especially the last half of 
it, — has witnessed the production of certain tentative 
and partial political systems which have had a notice- 
able influence on public thought, and have for the most 
part been useful contributions towards the erection of 
an edifice more complete than themselves. To this 
class of thinkers belong the schools of Mazzini, of the 
Continental Socialists, and of the English Utilitarians. 

The influence of all these schools has been deep 
and extensive, and at present shows no signs of early 
exhaustion. But in spite of the undoubted merits of 
each one particular school, and notwithstanding the 
valuable ethical protests and discoveries made by each, 
they have been, universally, the products of violent 
political reactions. They are the efflorescence of pass- 



54 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

ing political circumstances, and not the ultimate fruit 
of accumulated thought. Great and noble as were the 
aspirations of Mazzini, republican institutions were for 
him primarily a repudiation of Austrian and priestly 
tyranny, and the expression of a belief in the doctrine 
of a Divine calling for men and for nations, rather than 
a scientific enquiry into facts either past or present. In 
the same way the various modifications of Socialism 
which have manifested themselves in Germany, Eussia, 
and France, are nothing more than partial and one- 
sided protests against the unequal distribution of 
wealth, the usurpations of privileged classes, the im- 
postures of ecclesiastical officials, or the administrative 
cruelty which is so frequently the off'spring of a highly 
centralised system of Government, -^whatever its name 
and form. In its various phases and according to 
special national conditions, what is known by the 
generic name of Socialism appears as the enemy now 
of private property, now of aristocratic and kingly 
privilege, now of centralised administration, now of the 
institutions of the Christian Church. Thus, while the 
possibility, and the actual existence, of so highly 
organised a remonstrance against prevalent ideas and 
facts must needs be noticed and accounted for by the 
scientific political inquirer, it cannot be said that 
Socialism in itself constitutes an independent school 
of scientific Politics. 

8. The attitude of the English Utilitarians, being 
more allied than that of the Socialist schools to the 
position of logical and comprehensive reasoners, would 
seem, in itself, favourable to the creation of a true school 
of scientific thoujirht. The men who have mainlj^ repre- 



ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 55 

sented tlie Utilitarian system in England,— of wliicli 
more will be said in the chapter which deals with Ethics 
in their bearing on Politics, — that is, Jeremy Bentham, 
the two Mills, John Austin, George Cornewall Lewis, 
and George Grote (the historian) — are a race of thinkers 
who conld not have failed to exercise a conspicuous 
influence in the region of practical and of theoretical 
politics, — to whatever school they might have inclined. 
But, with respect to most of them, a vehement re- 
actionary spirit has been more noticeable than a simple 
and uncomplicated search for scientific truth. They 
have thus been usually indifferent to the necessity of 
patient historical investigation, on the results of which 
alone a sound inductive process could be based ; and 
furthermore, have been antipathetic, if not hostile, to 
every form of religious belief. Considering the place 
that religious belief holds in the national affairs of 
every existing State and has occupied in the evolution 
of modern Christianised society and Government, it is 
an obvious disqualification in a thinker or a school of 
thought if there is an absence of all sympathy with, or 
recognition of, the religious emotions of mankind. 
Utilitarianism is by no means, in itself, bound up with 
religious indifference, but, owing to intelligible causes, 
the English school of Utilitarians have undoubtedly 
manifested marked repugnance to the religious senti- 
ment in all its phases. This indicates an unphiloso- 
phical state, of mind and has been a serious bar in the 
way of the creation of an English school of Scientific 
Politics 



56 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 



CHAPTER 11. 

POLITICAL TERMS. 

The first step in establishing the scientific claims of a 
department of knowledge is to show that its leading 
terms admit of being precisely explained and of having 
their meaning definitely fixed. What is or is not a 
true ' definition ' has been a matter of so much dispute^ 
if not of verbal quibbling, that it is safer to forego at 
the outset all attempt to construct a list of definitions. 
But it is of the utmost importance to use all terms 
which repeatedly occur in the treatment of a Science 
with all the attainable consistency, and to explain with 
complete clearness the facts and ideas which the terms 
denote. 

There are some special reasons why language is 
peculiarly subject in political speech and discussion to 
flux and vacillation of import, and therefore, why the 
processes of definition and explanation are peculiarly 
dijaicult. In the first place, political terms are largely 
in use among classes who either are habitually inexact 
in their use of language or who have a positive motive, 
— good, bad or indifferent, — to be inexact themselves 
or to encourage inexactness in others. Popular speech 
is at every moment handling the common words which 
are, of necessity, pressed into the service of political 
speculation and debate. These words therefore carry 



POLITICAL TEEMS. 57 

with them, wherever they go, the looseness and varia- 
bility of meaning they contract in the market-place 
and by the domestic fire-side. 

Political science can never claim for itself a sepa- 
rate terminology possessing only technical terms with 
a fixed and unswerving meaning. These advantages 
are monopolised by the physical sciences, especially 
by those of a more recondite nature and which are 
least distorted by the vulgar dialect. The studies of 
Ethics, Law, and Politics are so near to human and 
social life, in respect of their subject-matter, that they 
incur the fate of having all their leading terms in- 
fected by those current sentiments and prejudices 
which impress themselves so deeply on the popular 
words and conversational forms most in use. It is im- 
possible wholly to rescue political terms from the quag- 
mire of misuse into which they thus habitually fall. The 
most that can be done is to ascertain the various mean- 
ings or shades of meaning which an important term, 
needed for scientific use, bears in the common speech of 
the people, and to select one meaning or a limited num- 
ber of meanings for scientific recognition. The next 
step is to be consistent in adhering to this meaning or 
meanings and to allow no further metaphorical or ana- 
logical diversions. 

But political terms do not merely sufifer in fixity of 
meaning from the abuses common to words in familiar 
popular use. They are, furthermore, peculiarly exposed 
to a special liability to abuse from the practice of rhe- 
torical argument conducted either on the public plat- 
form or in the popular legislature or in the columns of 
the public journal. The terms repuhlicy democracy, aristo- 
eracy, centralisation, liberty, self-government, and the like 



58 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

are all capable of a fiivourable or unfavourable use, iind 
it can only be on a fair examination of all the circum- 
stances of the case to which they purport to apply that 
the sense in which they are employed in any special 
case can be determined. It, unfortuna-tely, is often for 
the apparent and momentary interest of the speaker or 
writer to wrest the meanings of political terms and to 
hide from the hearer or reader one of its undoubted 
significations, while forcing into undue prominence 
another. This is done habitually in the case of all 
excited speech or persuasive appeals, and political 
terms such as rights freedom, equality, crime, government, 
and the like are the first and most constant victims of 
this form of abuse. 

In the second place, political terms are liable to 
distortion from a cause which is the opposite of 
the one just described. For legal, diplomatic, and 
certain administrative purposes, political terms are 
often employed with an inflexible rigidity of meaning 
Avhich is at once diverse from their lax popular use and 
also from the less rigid though definite signification 
needed b}^ the requirements of a true Political Science. 
For instance, in a political discussion, orally conducted, 
in reference to a proposed land-law, those who take 
part in the debate will have repeated occasion to use 
such words as land, tenure, landlord, tenant, rent, im- 
provements, compensation, notice, letting, and hiring. 
For the purposes of the discussion immediately in 
hand it may be sufiicient that the speakers all under- 
stand each other, and it is desirable that no speaker 
should be stringently confined to a pedantic exactness 
in the use of his words. Something more precise is 
demanded than in occasional talk, proportionate to the 



POLITICAL TERMS. 59 

gravity of the issue and the presumable mental training 
of the speakers ; but an over refined circumscription of 
the use of common words would defeat its own purpose, 
and would rather impede than advance the discovery of 
truth and the reconciliation of opposed opinions. 

But every one of the terms above adduced by 
way of illustration has contracted a strict legal mean- 
ing. Most of them have been imported into written 
law; and all of them have formed the subject-matter of 
closely-reasoned arguments in Courts of Justice, and of 
consequent judicial decisions. It happens too, often 
enough, that the very persons who are called upon to 
use these terms in political assemblies, in view of con- 
templated legislation, are the same persons who in 
Courts of Justice, — it may be the same day, — are 
under the necessity of attributing to each of those 
terms an import of the utmost attainable precision 
and fixity. Thus it comes about that while the terms 
of political science are peculiarly exposed to abuse 
and vacillation through conversational laxity, they 
are likewise exposed to the risk of ambiguities owing 
to the simultaneous functions they perform in the tech- 
nical language of law, diplomacy, and administration. 

In the third place, political terms suffer in a peculiar 
degree from a cause which is the enemy of all fixity of 
meaning in terms, — incessant, though imperceptible, 
changes in the nature of the things and facts which 
they are used to denote. History is full of illustrations 
of this phenomenon, and sometimes the consequence is 
even widespread misunderstandings. This is especially 
the case when the people of one country try to acquaint 
themselves with the political condition, wants, and 
controversies of another country. 



60 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

For instance, the term constitutional is a peculiarly 
modern product. It had no corresponding term in the 
States of the Ancient World. It would seem to express 
an outgrowth of the basis of reconciliation on which 
it was possible for feudally opposed classes and persons 
to live side by side. It is a matter of mere curious 
research to attempt to fix the period in which the term 
constitution was first habitually used in its modern 
sense. But it was, undoubtedly, the contests, — always 
conducted on an assumed basis of reciprocal right, — 
between the English Commons and the Feudal Monarch, 
with or without the mediation of the Peers of the 
Eealm, that first gave relevancy to the notion of a 
State's constitution. What was in accordance with the 
subsisting and well-understood relationship between 
the classes of persons whose political claims against 
each other were expressed in that relationship was co^v- 
stitutional, — what violated or threatened to violate that 
relationship was unconstitutional. 

In the Ancient World, the notion of large classes 
of persons having indefeasible moral rights as against 
each other was wholly absent. There were interests, 
and there might be temporary compacts ; and there 
was always organised force ; but there was not, even 
in democratical Athens and in republican or oligar- 
chical Rome, at their best, a settled and publicly 
confessed reconciliation of the mutually opposed and 
conflicting claims of large classes of the population to 
which the name constitution alone belongs. There was 
a good substitute for a constitution in the fortunate 
discovery or natural development of wise, equal, and 
well distributed systems of Government in due subjec- 
tion to popular scrutiny and control. Hut this result 



POLITiaiL TERMS. 61 

was fortuitous and implicit, the transient exhibition of 
an equilibrium of competing forces and not the stable 
and con&ciously maintained platform for the adjustment 
of antithetical moral claims. It was possible enough for 
Aristotle to enumerate and describe all the subsisting 
forms of Government in the Greek cities. But had he 
attempted to describe, with his inimitable capacity for 
ethical analysis, the real foundations on which political 
stability in the several States rested, the want of any- 
thing corresponding to constitutional rights would have 
been at once apparent. The mere prevalence of slavery, 
— as was shown of late years in the case of the United 
States J — must have either proscribed the notion of a 
constitution or exhibited such palpable anomalies as to 
bring about what might have been premature revolu- 
tions. 

The history of the word party, and, still more, that 
of special party names, is a further instance of the 
flux of political language through political events often 
of a silent and scarcely perceptible kind. It may be 
said, indeed, that such terms as these are in themselves 
too inexact, and that they denote phenomena which 
are in their nature too evanescent, for them ever to 
become incorporated in a system of Political Science. 
But a recognition of the facts of which the organisation 
into parties is an expression forms part of that general 
political experience on which the truths of the science, 
if there be one, are built up. Therefore in discussing, 
say, the modern devices for facilitating popular repre- 
sentation and rendering democratic institutions com- 
patible with stability and unity of administration, an 
analysis of the essential mechanism of party Govern- 
ment must take place. But parties, though retaining 



62 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the names once stamped upon them, often undergo the 
most complete transmutations. The ^Whig' in the 
politics of the United States has little relation to the 
modern Whig in England; and the ^democrat' and 
* republican ^ on one side of the Atlantic are still less 
akin to the ' democrat ' and ' republican ^ severally on 
the other. Parties in the representative Assemblies of 
the British Colonies are organised on entirely different 
principles from those which have originated, and which 
maintain in being, the political parties at home. The 
parties, again, in the Trench, German, and Italian 
Parliaments can only be understood by reference to 
historical facts studied in view of the particular consti- 
tutional organisation to which the facts relate. 

What has here been said about ^ party ^ and ' consti- 
tution ^ might be further illustrated by reference to a 
train of words such as Farliament^ prerogative, Crown, 
franchise, Church, State, which, — however definite in 
meaning at a particular moment for a given State, — 
must be investigated and defined afresh if the reasoning 
be transferred to another State or to a different epoch. 

The peculiar dangers and perplexities incident to 
Political terminology have thus been adverted to. 
It fortunately happens, however, that a distribution 
can be made between the terms which are of more 
general importance, as denoting facts of the highest 
degree of universality and significance, and those of 
less importance for scientific purposes, as denoting facts 
peculiarly liable to change and diversity in their mani- 
festations. As to this latter class of terms it is useless 
in a scientific treatise to attempt any enumeration of 
them. Such an enumeration could only be based on 



THE TERM STATE. 63 

transient facts and phenomena, and at the best would 
be only descriptive of what has existed or happens 
now, in fact, to exist. As to these terms, the most that 
can be done is to interpose cautions of the kind already 
alluded to and founded on the intrinsic liability of all 
this class of terms to flux and variability of meaning 
brought about in the most subtle and unsuspected way. 
But as to the other class of political terms of the most 
universal kind, inasmuch as they denote conceptions 
not less general than Government itself it is possible 
to attach to them an exact meaning which need experi- 
ence no change with the progressive changed condition 
of human affairs. There is needed only an exhibition 
of the primary and essential composition of a State, in 
its strictly political aspect, and all the necessary con- 
.ceptions, with the terms needed to express them, at 
once come into relief. 

1. State. 
The most central notion in Political Science is that 
of the State ; and if it were once clearly ascertained 
what is and what is not comprehended under this term, 
many of the most harassing misunderstandings apper- 
taining to the subject would be avoided. The notion 
of the State as a distinct political unit is, in fact, a 
product of purely accidental development, and on this 
ground it might be doubted whether the notion is not in 
itself too ephemeral and fluctuating to become the sub- 
ject-matter of scientific reasoning. But it is the inherent 
peculiarity of political phenomena that the experience 
on which a knowledo^e of them rests has to be g-athered 
from a very circumscribed field, and that the mere 
existence of any such field at all is a special attainment 



64 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

of advancing civilisation. Thus the State in the stricter 
modern signification of the term as a political integer, 
differs at once from the Grecian city {ttoXl^), the Eoman 
republic {respicUica) and the German Feudal Empire 
which attempted to reproduce the symbolic unity, the 
titles, and the pretensions, of its great Eoman type. 

The modern notion of the State was, indeed, not 
brought into clear consciousness till a number of 
parallel States presented themselves side by side, and 
each of them, by enforcing its own claims against one 
and another of the rest, manifested to itself and to the 
world its own personality, independence, and integral 
unity. In this sense no one State existed before there 
was a plurality of States. The invading barbarian tribes 
settling upon the sharply marked out Roman provinces 
developed the essential relationships of Feudalism. - 
These relationships comprised the hierarchical subordi- 
nation of persons and classes, the recognition of terri- 
torial ownership and conditions- of occupation, and the 
existence of a variety of quasi-moral ties pervading the 
family and other social groups and expressing themselves 
in such terms as allegiance^ fealty^ loyalty, as well as in 
their counterparts felony and treason. Thus inside the 
nascent communities there were nurtured ideas, customs, 
practices, institutions, and associated conceptions, all 
tending to arrest the centrifugal impulses of a wandering 
and purely military life, and to create two poles of 
national existence — a king and a fixed territory. 

But the only reason for insisting strictly on terri- 
torial limits was the juxtaposition of a series of com- 
peting and similarly organised societies, each of which 
was engaged in appropriating to its own uses a deter- 
minate portion of land. Agricultural needs, revenue 



THE TEEM STATE. 65 

coDsiclerations, and the commercial advantages attacli- 
ing to special routes, harbours, and productive districts, 
tended to impart emphasis to the practice of territorial 
demarcation, as loosely and extensively inaugurated 
by the provincial distribution of the Roman Empire. 
Dialectical peculiarities and affinities, race sympathies, 
and instincts of fellowship generated by neighbourhood 
and by the reciprocal ties of military command and 
service, helped to bind together, for purposes both of 
internal organisation and of resistance to external 
pressure, the inhabitants of a clearly defined territorial 
area. Add to these the influence of the ecclesiastical 
institutions of Christendom, the local episcopacy and 
presbytery, the representative synods and councils, 
the territorial bases, small and great, of Church ad- 
ministration and service, and the functions of inter- 
national arbitrator gradually assumed by the Bishop of 
Eome. 

There was nothing wanting to the complete birth 
of the modern State but the final dissolution of the 
antiquated feudal tie between State and State ex- 
pressed in the evanescence of the Holy Roman Empire, 
and the formation of a new principle of centrali- 
sation within the State itself, brought about by the 
constitutional action and reaction between a modern 
monarch and his subjects. The State, in the modern 
acceptation of the term, carries with it the ideas of 
territorial limitation of population past, present, and 
to come, and of organisation for purposes of Govern- 
ment. Thus a series of affiliated ideas and terms at 
once come to the surface, such as Government, Law, 
Legislation, Administrative, Executive, Right, Prerogative, 
Liberty. 



66 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

It might be asked wliytlie accidental re-arrangements 
of the countries of Europe which followed on the fall or 
transmutation of the Roman Empire should dictate, for 
ever, the notion of a true State. To this it may be 
replied that the Geographical area to which the Science 
of Politics extends at present is limited — as will be seen 
farther on — to the countries of Europe and of North 
America and to those countries which are directly sub- 
jected to the influence and dominating control of Europe 
and the United States. Thus it is not saying too much 
to allege that, for all purposes of practical politics and, 
therefore, of that Science on which all sound practice 
must rest, the State is that integral unity which has been 
discovered by the accidents of European development. 

It might further be argued that the definition or 
explanation of the term State^ which has just been pro- 
pounded, is no mere accidental product of a casual 
development, but encloses a permanent and necessary 
conception. The nations of Europe would seem to have 
by no means as yet completed the process of their 
transformation, and the novel claims in favour of so- 
called ' nationality ' point to much further re-construc- 
tion still going on and yet to come. But it is to be 
noticed that all the changes are in one and the same 
direction, — that of defining a national area of a size 
large enough to promote and admit of all the economical 
and constitutional re-actions needed for the adequate 
evolution of human powers and relationships, but not 
large enough to swallow up all individual and national 
idiosyncrasies in an over-centralised dominion. Where 
the limit of the true State is to be fixed must be matter 
of experimental struggle rather than of philosophic 
vaticination. 



TIIE TEEM GOVERNMENT. ' 67 

It is scarcely necessary to advert to the abuse of 
the term State both in the popular dialect and, less 
excusably, in the speech of professed politicians or 
political orators. Thus the State, at one moment, means 
the Governing authority as opposed to the governed ; 
at another, the secular authorities, legislative and 
executive, as opposed to the ecclesiastical. Sometimes 
the State is contrasted with the existing or temporary 
mechanism for governing the State, that is, with what 
is called the Government. At other times the State 
implies the body politic, that is, the nation regarded as 
a subject of Government ; and this last meaning is 
most in accord with the results of the historical analysis 
just concluded, though serious omissions in the full and 
proper connotation of the term, — as in respect of terri- 
torial limits, and of continuous identity in point of 
time, — are not avoided. Lastly, there is the special 
meaning of the term appropriate to the constitution of 
the United States of North America, and the technical 
meaning known to International Law, according to 
which the State is an entity having certain recognisable 
predicates, such as independence of other entities like 
itself, and the power of self-government in respect of 
determining upon and controlling its own internal 
organisation. 

2. Government. 
The history of the European State has been seen to 
presuppose the fact of Government. Had the tribes 
which overran the provinces of the Roman Empire been 
essentially anarchical, or had the result of their irruption 
been to produce limitless and lasting anarchy, no true 
States could have arisen. There could have been no 



I 



68 • THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

demarcation of national territory; no national self- 
consciousness based on well-preserved customs com- 
memorative of the past and on more and more luminous 
anticipations of the future ; no cherishing of the dis- 
located relics of Eoman law, municipal institutions, and 
administrative discipline. But habits of Government, 
however rude, were well formed among the tribes before 
invasions and a variety of favourable circumstances 
conspired to rivet and develop these habits, while the 
amalgamation of native and Eoman inhabitants of the 
newly occupied lands was being effected. 

These habits of Government imply far more than a 
mere actual subjection of a multitude to the will and 
physical control of one or of a few. An actual subjection 
such as this may co-exist with all the elements of dis- 
union and of mutual repulsion ready to disclose them- 
selves at the first chance opportunity. Habitual deference 
to the commands of an authority elevated above the 
heads of the populace is a result of slow growth, and, 
usually, of arduous struggles and disappointing retro- 
gressions. It grows out of tardily formed incrustations 
of religious ritual, social manners, military usages, and 
family sentiments. It is enforced by joint enterprises, 
military and civil, on an ever widening scale of magni- 
tude, and is recommended by more and more prevailing 
considerations of economic advantage, and, at a later 
stage, of international rivalry. This habit of submission 
to orderly Government, when once formed, becomes its 
own chief cause. The practice of unconscious obedience 
to law begets desire for law, impatience of anarchy, 
and indignation against casual breakers of the public 
peace. 

The demand for Government simultaneously calls 



THE TERM LA IF. 69 

forth, first, a ruling class, and afterwards a profession 
of politicians in the highest sense of this sometimes 
abused term. The phenomenon of Government is only 
to be accounted for by supposing the presence of a 
number of contributory circumstances. It is not enough, 
with Hobbes, to assume that it is the mere product of 
usurpation and violence, or, at least, of mere superiority 
of physical strength ; nor, with Filmer, to deduce it 
from no more complex an origin than the analogies of 
parentage ; nor, again, with Locke or even Blackstone, 
to base it on legal arrangements formally entered into 
with each other by the governors and the governed. 
The phenomenon is rather a product of a congeries of 
favourable conditions, including, indeed, some or all 
of those which were once accepted as solely sufiicient 
explanations, but by no means confined to them. 

3. Laiv, 

Though the phenomenon of Law is intimately bound 
up with that of Government, yet modern criticism and 
research have gone far to establish the existence of 
important differences between the two orders of ideas. 
For instance, antiquarian investigations into the con- 
dition of primitive societies have brought to light almost 
unsuspected stages of existence in w^hich Law may be 
said to have existed without Government, w^hile nothing 
is more familiar than the fact that in all countries a 
settled Government subsists for many ages before the 
conscious manufacture of Law. But both in the one 
case and in the other, — that is, whether there is, strictly 
speaking, no Government at all and no true State, or 
whether Government has merely not yet advanced to 
the legislative or law-making stage, all the essential 



70 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

characteristics of law may be present. All the supple- 
mentary aid which Government can give is to ascertain 
and fix the rules of law actually in force, to lend its 
physical aid to the maintenance of their authority, 
and, as occasion suggests, to modify, amend, and even 
annul the rules themselves. 

When it is remembered that the formulated usages 
which tal^e the form of law affect every part of the 
social framework at its most sensitive points, — as, for in- 
stance, the family relationships, the ownership of land 
and of all other things, the business transactions of the 
shop and the market place, — it ceases to be a wonder 
that a new Government, suddenly introduced, by con- 
quest, cession, or alleged right of discover}^, into a 
country already possessing stable institutions, can do 
little, for years to come, to change those institutions, 
and rarely has the chance of introducing radically new 
ones. 

Some conquering nations have understood these 
truths by instinct. Others have learnt them by failure 
and suflFering. Alexander and the Ptolemies vindicated 
them with notable success in their administration of 
Egypt. To a large extent the Romans acted upon them 
in provincial administration, at all events in intention ; 
and to that extent they were, on the whole, in the best 
days of the Empire, successful in their provincial 
government. The Northern invaders of the Roman 
Empire pursued a similar policy, as the invaluable so- 
called Barbaric Codes, prepared for the Roman subjects 
of the conquered provinces, testify, and with a success 
demonstrated by the rapid development of a new 
national life on the ruins of the old. The Arabs in 
their conquests generally pursued a like policy, while 



THE TEKM LA IV. 71 

the trmmplis of their religion as well as of their arms 
brought about, in an incredibly short space of time, 
a total moral and legal reconstruction of society in 
those countries which they succeeded in permanently 
occupying. 

The English in India have found it to be one of 
their main difficulties to understand the prevalent 
legal rules, especially in regard to inheritance and the 
occupation of land; the more so as these rules differ 
widely from village to village, and still more widely from 
province to province. The obstacles to having any 
uniform rules, whether framed from a comparison of 
all the chief existing groups of regulations and usages, 
or on some new principle recommended by general ex- 
pediency, and not out of harmony with current facts and 
ideas, have proved hitherto all but insuperable. Never- 
theless, way has been made in the direction of settled 
and uniform law congenial to the habits of the people, 
by the institution of central Courts of Justice, by special 
land legislation for particular districts, and by codifying 
such parts of the existing law in an amended form as, 
from time to time, it has seemed possible to codify. 

It need not be said that in Ireland the English 
pursued a policy exactly the opposite of that adopted in 
India ; and the results have been such as are only too 
notorious and might almost seem to be irreparable. 

The force of those spontaneous usages, which operate 
as nascent law in primitive communities, is much 
intensified and concentrated by the co-existence of a 
variety of religious sanctions. It has often been noticed 
that in early society religious and secular ordinances of 
all sorts are inextricably mixed together. JN'ot only in 
ascertaining the forms of marriage and the modes of 



72 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

discliargmg purely religious obligations, but in the pro- 
tection of boundaries ; in the use of the oath in judicial 
enquiries ; and in the solemn rites which accompany the 
more notable legal acts, especially in respect of inherit- 
ance, the intervention of a priesthood is conspicuously 
called for. Besides this, no certain line of distinction 
is drawn between sins, crimes, and civil injuries ; and 
consequently the whole forces of the growing society are 
directed towards repressing each and all of them with 
impartial zeal and generating an habitual tone of 
thought and opinion unfavourable to transgression. 

It is this tone of thought and opinion which the 
Government secures on its side when it forbears to inno- 
vate, except by slow and tentative degrees, on the fixed 
habits and dispositions of the people. It is impossible 
to over-estimate the force of custom in human affairs, 
and the serviceableness of its potency when rightly 
turned to account. To defer to the actual prevalence of 
certain classes of ideas, rules, and institutions, is by no 
means to organise stagnation and immobility. It is 
only to recognise that men must be governed in ac- 
cordance with the laws of their nature at a given time 
and place ; and that much of this nature is the product 
of inherited habits and accumulated associations of all 
sorts. These habits and associations may be slowly 
and gradually deflected into new directions and re- 
fashioned afresh. It is the province of a wise Govern- 
ment to bring this about, and here and there, especially 
in respect of cruel and inhuman practices, it may be 
necessary to prune with a strong and firm hand. But 
as a rule it is prudent to employ custom as the ally 
of Government rather than to challenge it as its foe. 

The large bulk of a nation's law^s has thus its origin 



THE TEEM LA If, 73 

ill customs which have, as it were, spontaneously conje 
into existence and been maintained in force, partly by 
the mere facility of obeying the promptings of habit, 
j)artly by the influence of public opinion exerted in favour 
of vrhat is familiar and consecrated by long use, and 
partly by the felt convenience of having settled rules, 
institutions, and practices, to which the mass of the 
community may be expected at all times to conform. But 
though these customary rules and usages not only 
contain the germ of all future law but are identical in 
spirit and matter with the most important portions of 
that law, yet it is convenient to confine the use of the 
term laiu to those rules which attain commanding 
validity only when the State can be looked upon 
as fully developed in all its essential departments. 
Before this epoch of the complete evolution of the State 
it may, indeed, happen that many of the phenomena of 
law are present, as though by anticipation, in an un- 
mistakable guise. 

For instance, a regular practice of recurring to 
Courts of Arbitration, more or less adequately and 
permanently organised, may subsist, and the award 
of the Court may be carried out by the exertion of 
some amount of social force. There may also be 
a skilled class of professional men, usually belonging 
to a priestly caste, who will be held possessed of ex- 
clusive competency to decide disputed points in the 
detailed application of recognised rules, or to draw 
out of some mysterious repository a hitherto un- 
recognised or forgotten rule or custom believed to be 
appropriate to a new case in hand, or to determine the 
equitable claims of rival disputants who each rely on 
some admitted custom as telling in their favour. But 



74 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

in such a condition of society, there is, as yet, no central 
authority, supreme over all the community, which, 
in however imperfect and inchoate a form, may be said 
to wield the forces of the whole community and to re- 
present its will. In other words, there is no Govern- 
ment in the political sense, no State, and no true 
Law. Law is, in fact, the detailed expression of the 
will of the State published through its originator, the 
Government, — that is, the Supreme Political Authority 
of the day. Thus, however closely related is early law 
to highly developed custom, yet they must not be 
confused together, and cannot be so confused without 
loss of distinctness in political thought. 

It is possible that, owing to foreign conquest, in- 
ternal discord or revolution, or mere weakness in the 
political institutions, an assemblage of laws may, at a 
particular moment, be imposed on a people w^ho are 
unprepared for them by preceding customs, or who are, 
on other grounds, persistently averse to them. In such 
a case there will be a more or less conscious and open 
struggle maintained between the genius, spirit, and 
mental and moral necessities, of the peo]3le, and the mere 
physical power, expressing itself by law, of the ruler. 
If no compromise is arrived at by a gradual process of 
mutual concessions, the only two alternative solutions 
are, either that the State is dissolved into lasting 
anarchy and barbarism, or else a certain amount of civic 
order is maintained, — possibly through the influence 
of a continuing religious unity, — while an enduring 
opposition is kept up between the people and the 
Government which is incompatible with all political and 
social progress and constantly threatens revolutions and 
spasmodic changes in the personality of the rulers. 



THE TERM LAW. 75 

Instances of all these classes of consequences, which 
follow from attempting to impose laws out of harmony 
with the previous usages and the temperament of the 
people, are abundantly supplied by history, though the 
influence of religion and of priestly castes or func- 
tionaries has often gone far to counteract or modify 
purely political causes and to enhance the difficulty of 
an exact analysis. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the mediating in- 
fluence of the early Christian Church in promoting 
at once national distinctness and international unity 
among the new States which arose from the settlement 
of the Teutonic invading tribes in the provinces of the 
Roman Empire. This was effectual not only through the 
hierarchical and territorial organisation of the Church 
but through the body of common rules, ordinances, 
practices, and ritual, which laid hold of the bulk of the 
people at the most susceptible part of their being, and 
in an incredibly short space of time took the place of 
all purely secular rules and customs, however ancient 
and fervently cherished by the popular imagination. 

It was the good fortune of the Arab conquerors 
that religious proselytism went hand in hand with 
military conquest; and the permanence of these con- 
sequences may largely be accounted for in this way. 
The victories of the Ottoman Turks further illustrate 
the force which a military adventurer possesses when 
he carries with him a religious law either already pro- 
fessed in the invaded countries or which he is prepared 
to impose as paramount over all other law. Similar 
illustrations might be found in the history of the 
Thirty-years' war in Germany. 

It may be feared that, while the religious im- 



76 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICa 

partiality of the English, in India has won them a 
character for toleration and justice, the process of 
governing and civilising the whole country has been 
impeded and delayed by the want of a more open, if 
not more intolerant, profession of the religious creed, 
and observance of the religious law, prevalent among 
the English people at home. 

When once it is settled that Law, in the true sense, 
can only be found in the perfected, or at least fully 
created. State, and that Law and Government imply 
each other, it is obvious that it is of no consequence 
whether Law be written or unwritten, so far as its 
essential nature is concerned. It necessarily happens, 
indeed, that the spontaneous customs of which early 
law consists, or out of which it is generated, do not 
admit of being written down even in an unsystematic 
form. This may be due to the absence of literary 
methods and habits, to the unsymmetrieal and ir- 
regular form of the rules themselves, or to conscious 
reticence on the part of a learned or priestly class who, 
in pursuit of some end or other, — beneficent or the re- 
verse, — deem it to be inexpedient to communicate to the 
public more of the customs than from time to time are 
called for by the exigencies of pending controversies. 
Primitive codes, such as the XII Tables at Eome, the 
Laws of Moses, the Capitularies and Codes of Charle- 
magne and his successors in different countries, by no 
means mark only a stage of insurrection against the 
assumptions of a priestly caste. They may indeed 
denote such a stage, but only as a part of a broader 
phenomenon. 

The essential features of fully developed law, as con- 



WRITTEN AND UNWEITTEN LAW. 77 

trasted witli primitive custom, are that it should for 
the most part be uniform for all the members of the 
State ; that it should be certain, that is, not susceptible 
of ambiguous and variable interpretations according to 
the caprice of irresponsible persons ; and that its ad- 
ministration should be public, or at least conducted in 
a method which shall bear searching and even unfriendly 
public criticism. To substitute such uniform, certain, 
and generally intelligible, rules for fragmentary and 
doubtful customs is the obvious interest of every in- 
dependent ruler who has a clear view of the task of 
Government which lies before him ; and it is a policy 
which must recommend itself to all statesmen in the 
nascent community who are bent on bringing about as 
speedily as possible that national unity and consolida- 
tion on which the hopes of order and of progress 
repose. 

It may happen that, even in a highly advanced 
State, a large portion of the law may for ages continue 
unwritten ; and this may proceed from very opposite 
causes. Thus there are no indications of a systematised 
written law in Ancient Egypt, from the earliest times 
known to us till it became a Roman province ; but 
there are plenty of indications from early papyri and 
inscriptions that even before the time of Eameses II., 
in (say) the fifteenth century B.C., the land laws, the 
laws of inheritance, family law, criminal law and con- 
stitutional law, and even the rudiments of a law of 
Nations, had reached a high degree of development. 
In Greece, besides the legendary legislation of such 
statesmen as Lycurgus, Draco and Solon, and the 
Utopia of Plato's ' Law^s,' there are no signs, amidst 
all the exuberant intellectual activity, of any attempt 



78 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

to recast the national laws and express them in a-n 
exact and systematic form. So, in all the feudal 
States of modern Europe, even in England, it is only 
within the last century or century and a half that 
any determined attempts have been made to republish 
the customary law in a written and clearly intelligible 
form. 

The reasons which delay the reduction of laws to 
writing are different in diflPerent countries, as is mani- 
fest from the very opposite circumstances of the coun- 
tries in which the laws have been left for ages uncodified 
and unwritten. Among the reasons for maintaining 
the law in an oral and unsystematic shape was, un- 
doubtedly, the dominant influence of a professional or 
priestly class, the conservators and interpreters of the 
national customs, who alone possessed an amount of 
leisure and education sufficient for the purpose of 
mastering the whole of the treasured rules and practices 
and for deliberately determining where and how they 
apply, in detail, to new and particular cases of fact. 

The influence of the priestly colleges in Egypt ; of 
the Parliaments in France, especially that of Paris ; of 
the Judges in England^ — who were a direct emanation 
of the Norman King's feudal court, and were supported 
at an early stage by a compactly organised legal pro- 
fession, — was of this overbearing kind ; and while, in 
each case, it tended to keep the law stable and uniform, 
and perhaps rendered it plastic in its application to 
individual cases, it made it difficult of reform in com- 
pliance with the public needs. 

In England as distinguished from other countries 
the mischief of legal immobility was corrected, j)artly 
by the growth of a secondary system of supplementary 



WKITTEN AND UNWRITTEN LAW. 79 

law known as ' Equity/ and partly by the early develop- 
ment of positive written law. 

In Rome the delay in reducing the laws to writing 
was duO;, at all events after the date of the XII Tables, 
to a different cause from that explained above ; and the 
absence of any body of written laws in Greece may 
probably be explained in the same way as the like 
phenomenon at Rome. 

Both in Rome and in Greece, in their best days, 
from a political point of view, the national intellect 
only laid hold of law on the side of procedure. It was 
in the actual contests of the Forum and of the Dicas- 
teries that the main public interest was aroused, and 
on these that the broadest amount of scientific zeal 
was concentrated. In Rome, indeed, in the latter days 
of the Republic, though the interpretation and appli- 
cation of well settled rules of law in the interest of 
friends, clients, and pupils, had become the refined 
pursuit of the wealthy man of culture, yet this implied 
no widely extended and enlightened care for legal 
knowledge. The public appetite for acquaintance with 
the law, even, if excited, was constantly appeased by 
the fortunate device, — afterwards to some extent re- 
produced in the Court of Chancery in England, — of an 
assiduous modification of the written and unwritten 
law through the medium of the Prsetor's Edict. By his 
Edict and his peremptory remedies, the Pra3tor always 
presented law before the minds of the people as stable 
and yet not inflexible from age to age ; and by supple- 
menting unwritten traditions with tentative written 
rules he withdrew attention from the composite and 
unsystematic character of the whole body of law. 

Simultaneously the political activity of the hour in 



80 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

Eome, as also in Greece, habituated the people to look 
to persons, and to pressing political measures and exi- 
gencies, rather than to abstract logical principles and 
to the conclusions to be drawn from them. There is 
an essential incompatibility between a legal and a poli- 
tical age, as between an individual legal and political 
mind. It was not until the overpowering pressure of 
the Empire at Rome, and of the Macedonian ascendency 
in Greece, had paralysed all genuine political activity in 
both States that the popular and the scientific mind 
was at leisure to follow purely logical and speculative 
pursuits. The appearance of such a treatise as the 
' Institutes ' of Gaius, — which is only a specimen acci- 
dentally preserved of countless other similar produc- 
tions dealing, after a logically arranged method, with 
the whole or parts of the law, — and of systematic com- 
pilations of Imperial enactments, marks the advent of 
an era of codification which reached its culmmation in 
Justinian's time. In Greece the liberated scientific — 
and indeed the popular — thought betook itself rather 
to philosophy than to law, though, in the Logic of 
Aristotle, which was the last and not the least precious 
fruit of the Greek mind, that identical tendency is con- 
spicuous which in Eome and Constantinople took the 
form of legal reasoning and systematisation. 

Apart, however, from the consideration of the cir- 
cumstances which favour the conservation of long estab- 
lished unwritten law generated by primeval custom, 
the task of re- casting the whole body of national law, 
written and unwritten, in the systematic shape of a 
formulated series of positive enactments, without in- 
juriously innovating on fixed rules and institutions, is 
so difficult that it is no wonder that it has, in fact. 



CODIFICATION. 81 

never been proceeded with except under some extra- 
ordinary and powerful impulse. For a long time, 
indeed, the whole body of law is so small, — that is, 
in its express rules and comprehensive principles, — 
that there is no sufficient reason for undertaking a 
difficult, hazardous, and thankless task. As the law 
grows in quantity through the internal development 
which comes from fresh incrustations of industrial and 
mercantile customs, and from successive interpretative 
decisions of Courts of Justice, and through direct legis- 
lation, the task of systematic reconstruction becomes 
at once increasingly difficult and increasingly neces- 
sary. 

But the minds of lawyers are trained in the law in 
the form in which it came to them, and therefore they 
naturally shrink from encountering a change which 
must be most favourable to the young, who have least 
to unlearn. They are also abundantly occupied in 
solving the practical questions which hourly present 
themselves, and so cannot be expected to afford much 
time to engage in projects which seem to them specu- 
lative and idealistic. On all these accounts, nothing 
short of urgent political necessity has hitherto produced 
a total transcription of unwritten into written law. 
The pressure may proceed from a despotic sovereign, 
or from a resolute people, or from statesmen acting in 
the face of circumstances which cannot be evaded. 

Thus Justinian only brought to a head a process 
of comprehensive codification which the distribution 
and re-combination of the provinces of the Empire 
between Diocletian's time and his own, the decom- 
posing influence of the ecclesiastical institutions as 
they became constantly more dominant, and the judi- 



82 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

cial re-organisation of the Empire effected bj him- 
self rendered inevitable. Julius Csesar seems to have 
contemplated a like task, though his aims were prob- 
ably no other than those of Frederick the Great, 
namely those of making the internal order and unity 
reflect the external harmony achieved by his arms and 
policy. 

Napoleon I., by Codification, only carried out what 
had been recognised among the earliest projects of the 
Revolutionary leaders as one of the most pressing re- 
quirements of the Eepublic. The abolition of the relics 
of feudalism, — especially in the land laws, — the total 
reconstruction on a humane and rational basis of the 
criminal law, and the amalgamating into a common 
system the usages prevalent in the two classes of pro- 
vinces governed respectively by Feudal usage and by 
Eoman Law, were all considerations which, in the eyes 
even of a superficial statesman, made the task of 
Codification a necessary sequel of the Revolution. 
Napoleon may have the credit of recognising this to 
the full, and no doubt his military and organising 
habits of mind disposed him to follow the same course 
as those congenial to Julius Csesar and Frederick the 
Great of Prussia. That Napoleon used the opportunity 
of comprehensive legislation to introduce such enact- 
ments on Divorce and Succession as would favour the 
dynastic interests of himself and his family detracts 
from his moral honesty, but it is no disparagement to 
his intellectual credit that he perceived one of the most 
urgent political wants of the day and did his utmost to 
supply it. 

The circumstances of the English in India have been 
such as to make an entire reconstruction of the preva- 



CODIFICATION IN INDIA. 83 

lent legal systems an ever increasing political necessity 
in proportion as new States were incorporated and 
central Courts of Justice were from time to time insti- 
tuted. The local village customs, the dominant in- 
fluence of Mahommedan and Brahminic law^ especially 
in matters of inheritance and succession, the so-called 
^ Regulations ' issued by the officials of the English 
Government, and the occasional legislation of a compre- 
hensive kind by the British Indian Government or by 
the British Parliament, formed a congeries of laws which 
rendered the administration of Justice by central Courts, 
especially of Appeal, a matter of almost insuperable 
difficulty, and yet which only reflected the alternative 
anarchy or tyranny that confusion of laws must entail 
among the population. 

It has taken a long time, amid political and mili- 
tary distractions, to reduce even special departments of 
the law into an organised form not inharmonious with 
the principles of reason and humanity believed to 
characterise English Law at home. But the task is 
rapidly being accomplished. Anyway the Anglo-Indian 
experience is a good illustration of the bearing of poli- 
tical exigencies on the question of converting unwritten 
into written law. 

Codification has of late years progressed with great 
rapidity in Canada and the United States of America. 
It might have been anticipated that fewer obstacles to 
radical legal change would be encountered among a 
people whose ancestors had, within very recent times, 
migrated as colonists from another country and brought 
their law with them in the detached and insulated 
form of Royal Charters, and such maxims of the Eng- 
lish unwritten law or statutes as were, in the language 



84 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

of Courts of Justice, alone held applicable to them in 
their new circumstances. 

So violent a change of attitude towards the bulk of 
the national law in use at home could not but prepare 
the colonists and their descendants for legal and consti- 
tutional modifications according as public convenience 
might from time to time suggest. Similar agencies in 
the Spanish and French Settlements, which ultimately- 
gravitated, by the force of pacific arrangements or con- 
quest, to the side either of the United States or of the 
Dominion of Canada, produced like results, manifesting 
themselves in an easy disposition to amend the law and 
even to reconstruct its form from the foundation. 

The excellent Codes of Louisiana, the partly adopted 
and partly projected Codes of the State of New York, 
and the Canadian Codes, incorporating in some cases 
the old pre-re volution French Law with the modern 
English and Colonial legislative enactments, are speci- 
mens of the superior facility for legal reconstruction 
which is likely to be found in Colonial settlements 
as contrasted with the obstacles encountered in long 
established societies. 

As to the employment of the term Law^ it has 
been debated whether it should be extended so as to 
include all commands whatever, express or implied, 
proceeding, at a given time, from the supreme Poli- 
tical Authority then dominant, and, therefore, to all 
intents and purposes representing and personating the 
State ; or whether it should be restricted to such of 
these commands as are designed to meet something 
more than a merely temporary emergency, and have 
some generality in their character, as being addressed 
to classes of persons or as relating to classes of acts 



WHAT IS A TRUE LAW. 85 

commanded or forbidden, or concerned with classes of 
occasions which are generically described in the terms 
of the law. It has been said that in the case of a mere 
single act commanded or forbidden by a Legislature, 
there lacks the permanence, generality, and in some 
way the dignity, which are of the essence of a true 
law. 

The real distinction is probably to be sought be- 
tween the enacting Legislative Authority all whose 
commands of all sorts are true laws, and the Execu- 
tive Authority which, though acting in accordance 
with law, does not make law, but only carries out 
the will of the Legislature by doing acts of practical 
Government. Some of these acts often include the 
issuing of bodies of rules which, are not distinguishable 
from partial Codes of Law. Such are the by-laws of 
Railway Companies in England as approved by the 
Privy Council, — which, for some purposes, is a portion 
of the Executive Government, — and Police or Municipal 
regulations made by the Chief of the Police or a Mayor 
and Corporation in accordance with special Acts of Par- 
liament. But though these by-laws, rules, and regula- 
tions have all the aspect of true laws, and by virtue 
of the subordinate legislative powers under which they 
are made have all the effect and operation of true laws, 
they are, from the point of view of the authority 
immediately enacting them, merely Executive Acts. 

When a portion of the Legislature, such as the Eng- 
lish House of Commons, has customary powers conceded 
to it for making rules in defence of its own rights, 
dignity, and authority, and for enforcing compliance by 
punishing offenders, either within or outside of its own 
body, by fine and imprisonment, its regulations are true 
laws in respect of their form and cogency, and in virtue 



86 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

of tlie delegated authority by means of wliich they are 
made. But, from the point of view of the actual enact- 
ing authority, they are merely Executive acts, and the 
House of Commons is, for these purposes, treated as a 
branch of the Executive Authority, and is endowed with 
powers appropriate to the due exercise of its functions. 

In those cases in which, by the Constitution of the 
United States, the Senate is empowered, in concert with 
the President, to do certain purely executive acts, — as 
to conclude a treaty of peace, or to appoint a foreign 
ambassador, — the form of these acts may include issuing 
bodies of rules and regulations binding on all American 
citizens. But they are only true laws because they 
are made by a delegated and subordinate Authority 
dependent on the Legislature, — that is, on Congress as 
a whole. On the face of them, however much they may 
bear the semblance of law and have all the effect and 
operation of law, they are only executive acts. 

The opposite phenomenon is manifested so often as 
the whole Legislature, acting in its corporate capacity, 
and with the use of the same solemn forms which are 
observed when it enacts laws, does isolated acts of an 
executive kind having none of the generality and per- 
manence usually associated with the term law. This 
takes place when a gift of houses or lands is made to a 
successful general as an heirloom in his family, or 
when a public ceremonial is decreed, or a grant of 
money in relief of some private or public disaster 
awarded, out of the public funds. To the same class of 
acts would belong the sudden suspension of the common 
law, or of some general statute, to prevent the crew 
and cargo of some particular ship believed to carry 
infection being disembarked at a certain port, or at any 



TERMS LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE. 87 

port, for a certain time. Here again, a state of things 
converse to that adverted to above exists. In outward 
form all these acts are of an executive nature. They 
are occasional, temporary, almost spasmodic, and seem 
to have none of the sort of relation to the permanent 
consciousness of the people, and to their natural expec- 
tations, which is the usual characteristic of unmistak- 
able law. 

Nevertheless these acts are all true laws, and 
nothing is gained by not calling them so. They 
formally emanate from a genuine, and the only genuine, 
legislative authority. They are commands addressed 
not only to the persons directly within the purview of 
the policy resorted to, but to all persons whatever on 
whom they impose fresh duties. Such persons are not 
only those whose rights are restricted by the enlarge- 
ment of the rights of the other person in whose favour 
the command is issued, but all those judicial and lower 
executive officials who are bound to take cognisance 
of the command and to secure general obedience to it 
exactly as to the most unquestionable legal enactments. 
Thus, in distinguishing between a law and an executive 
act, it is rather the ordaining authority than the pur- 
port, contents, or form, of the rule that has to be kept 
in view. This leads at once to a consideration of the 
terms Legislative and Executive, 

4. Legislative and Executive, 
In early times there is Law and there is an Executive 
Authority; but either (to put it one way) there is no 
Legislative Authority, or (to put it another way) the 
Legislative and Executive Authority are indistinguish- 
able. A Legislative Authority is an Authority en- 



88 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

gaged in making or altering or repealing laws. But 
in the earliest form of national society the laws^ or re- 
cognised usages, of the people are either so immovable 
that none but a rash and suicidal conqueror ventures to 
innovate upon them; or else are so uncertain, con- 
fused, heterogeneous, and disordered, that the despotic 
will of that conqueror supplies the only approaches to 
any settled rule or order. It may be, indeed, — especially 
as society advances, — that a sort of fixed condition of 
compromise is attained, and a steady line of demarcation 
drawn, between the laws which shall be regarded as 
unalterable and those which may be changed or abo- 
lished at the ruler's will. Of this state of things 
in which the germs of a true political constitution are 
manifested, specimens were exhibited during the era of 
the earlier Feudal Monarchies of Europe, and, still 
more remarkably, in the relations of the Secular Head 
of the Holy Eoman Empire towards his ecclesiastical 
subjects. 

The natural rise of a true Legislative Authority 
may be not improperly illustrated by the mode in 
which the English Feudal sovereignty, — with purely 
executive powers, controlled by the vassals and terri- 
torial magnates, and in the presence of a fixed body of 
customary law, — step by step bifurcated into a legis- 
lative and an executive authority, of one of which 
authorities the monarch was a component portion, and 
of the other of which he was the chief representative. 
It was notorious that the change was brought about by 
the incidental dependence of the monarch, for military 
services and supplies, first, on his immediate vassals, 
and afterwards on chosen representatives of town and 
rural interests throughout the country. 



RISE OF A LEGISLATIVE AUTIIOJMTY. 89 

, The feudal vassals, and subsequently the deputies of 
the people, made the redress of practical grievances the 
conditio sine qua non of submitting to taxation for the 
king's foreign enterprises. But the form which the 
petition for the redress of these grievances took was 
the better observance, by the king and his officials, of 
the terms of some long standing and well recognised 
compact appertaining to popular or feudal rights ; or 
else of some charter granted by the king or his pre- 
decessors; or of some ancient laws,— possibly mythical 
in their origin, and, at any rate, of uncertain but 
vaguely beneficial import, — such, as the ' Laws of 
Edward the Confessor.' When the king granted peti- 
tions of this sort, there was no true legislation in the 
fullest sense because there was no intentional or actual 
change of the law. But the effect nndonbtedly was not 
only to give fresh securities for the recognition of the 
law by the king and his officials, but, by bringing some 
of the terms of a partly forgotten and neglected law 
into fresh prominence, to re-enact the law, and thereby, 
in fact, to inaugurate a true process of legislation. 
This process was sometimes carried one stage further, 
in the case of obstinate abuses, — as in the reign of 
Eichard II., — by appointing a Commission charged with 
the function of administering the Government, and, 
within limits more or less clearly defined, of super- 
intending the execution of the laws hitherto violated. 

This act of creating an executive authority is a true 
legislative act, inasmuch as it imposes new duties, 
confers new rights, and introduces new rules or ordi- 
nances. The Legislative Authority progressively con- 
tinues to assume its true functions, and it is not long 
before it begins to criticise the whole existing legal 



90 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

system, and boldly to abolish laws which seem bad, to 
reform those which are inadequate to their end, and to 
enact new laws intended to meet the wants of the day. 

In this course of inchoate legislation it may happen 
that a king, like Edward I., may co-operate with the 
reforming spirit or even take the initiative in broaching 
novelties. And it is probable enough that in early 
essays in Legislation, as in the times of Edward III., 
Richard II., Henry VIII., and even of Elizabeth, 
serious economical, ethical, and political misadventures 
may be encountered in entering on yet untried paths. 
But the important point is that the Legislative Autho- 
rity thus becomes conscious of its own powers, responsi- 
bilities, and distinctness from the Executive Authority 
as personated by the King. 

Where an energetic and independent Legislative 
Authority in an extreme political emergency goes the 
length of abolishing the monarch, or the monarchy, as 
in the case of Charles I. and James II., — to take no 
earlier instances, — the Legislative Authority, divorced 
momentarily even from the monarch himself, becomes 
conscious of a still more exceptional amount of inde- 
pendence and responsibility. Exerting a new-found 
capacity of action it takes upon itself to re-cast, 
within limits defined only by the popular sentiment of 
the hour, the legal outlines of the Constitution itself, and 
to emphasise laws and distinct rules of Governmental 
action in relation to the people, for which only a 
friendly imagination can find a precedent in the past. 
Such a legal reconstruction was effectually achieved by 
the Long Parliament, by the first Parliaments after the 
Restoration, and by the later Parliaments of William III. 

The above account might be regarded as only the 



RISE OF A LEGISLATIVE AUTIIOEITY. 91 

accidental historical development of the Legislative 
Authority, in relation to the Executive, in one particuhir 
country, and therefore as containing no materials, or 
only casually suggestive ones for the establishment 
of scientific truths. But a closer examination will 
show that, just as Feudalism itself is only an illustra- 
tive exhibition of a normal and recurrent stage of 
social and political growth, — in which the military 
leader establishes definite terms of relationship and of 
reciprocal service between himself and his companions 
in arms, and of which the occupation of conquered 
territory is at once the medium and, as it were, the 
Sacramental register, — so the escape from Feudalism 
proved in England by the growth of a genuine Legis- 
lative Authority, in opposition to the Executive still re- 
presented by the monarch, is a world-wide phenomenon 
simply made more conspicuous in England by the slow, 
steady, and uninterrupted manifestation of every one of 
the links in the chain of development. 

In other countries the process has only been accom- 
plished after hundreds of years of political stagnation, 
or after periods of anarchy or after the social chaos 
produced by religious corruption. Eevolutions have at 
such times vindicated the popular claim not to be left 
behind in the political race, and have not only wrought 
definite constitutional and lega.1 reforms but have called 
into being a Legislative Authority after the fashion of 
countries fortunate enough to have had a more tranquil 
career of internal progress. 

Such has been eminently the case of France, where, 
for ages, the only protests in favour of a constitutional 
Legislative Authority were the often ineffectual refusals 
to register the king's decrees on the part of the Parlia- 



V2 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

nient of Paris, which had degenerated into a mere pro- 
fessional body of advocates. The king might indeed, 
by appearing in person and holding a lit de justice^ con- 
trive to supersede this popular or, at least, professional 
interference. But it was an advantage to public liberty 
that legislation proper was, presumptively, and ac- 
cording to the vulgar apprehension, shared between the 
feudal monarch and other Constitutional authorities, 
although by an act of apparent and exceptional usurpa- 
tion the monarch might for the occasion re absorb the 
legislative power and rule alone. As in early England, 
so in France on the verge of her great Eevolution, it was 
the urgent want of money that precipitated a recurrence 
to the people by summoning their representatives as 
Estates of the Realm ; and the first stage of the Revolu- 
tion was nothing more than a somewhat violent transfer 
of the Legislative Authority, from the king alone to the 
king and his constitutional partners. 

The history of the growth of a Legislative Authority 
in Germany is somewhat different ; but this difference 
is mainly due to the peculiar federal constitution of the 
German Empire and not to any dissimilarity in the 
principles involved. 

It must be remembered that the Councils and 
Synods of the Church were visible examples of quasi- 
representative Assemblies co-operating with a spiritual 
potentate who was recognised, for many purposes, as 
supreme and absolute, yet they held themselves entitled 
to modify, repeal, or enact rules for the government of 
the Church as an organised society : as a judicial body 
they pronounced sentence on alleged infringers of ex- 
isting rules as well as determined the meaning or appli- 
cation of ambiguous rules : and, more generally, they 



THE LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY IN GERMANY. 93 

mediated between what was believed to be the eternal 
framework and constitution of the Church and the 
imperative demands of a progressive secular society 
which surrounded, and yet was included in, the Church. 
These Councils and Synods were not only habitually 
regarded with almost superstitious veneration even at 
the very time when their decrees were dissented from 
and their authority practically repudiated, but their acts 
were accomplished in the sight of all men, and the eflFect 
of these acts was to bring them incessantly into collision 
with the Civil Power. 

The result was that throughout the Holy Eoman 
Empire, including the large mass of what are now the 
leading States of Northern and Central Europe, the civil 
constitution of the several States tended to imitate and 
reproduce the type of Government which was not only 
familiar but obviously reasonable and convenient. The 
Emperor came through perpetual contact to be the 
correlative of the Pope even rather than the typical 
semblance of the Eoman Emperor of old. The Diet 
of the Empire similarly reproduced the Ecclesiastical 
Assemblies; while the Electors of the Empire in ap- 
pointing the head of the Executive enacted in the 
corresponding sphere the part of the chief Ecclesiastical 
officials. Tn these functions of the Diet and of the 
Electors the conception of true legislative tasks was 
included; though, from the essential infirmity of the 
Federal constitution, the performance of these tasks 
was restricted to the choice and limited control of the 
Executive Authority ; to making a few desultory pro- 
visions for the peace of the Empire ; and to maintaining 
a sufficient friendly accord between the secular and 
religious authorities. The actual amendment of the 



94 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

customary private law prevalent in the different States 
was either entirely neglected or left to the local legis- 
lative authorities which were contemporaneously grow- 
ing up, slowly enough, on all sides. 

And here it may be noted that, even in England, it 
is only within the present century that the private civil 
law and the criminal law have been boldly grappled with 
by the Legislative Authority. Before this period all the 
energy of that Authority was addressed to those parts 
of the law which directly or indirectly affected the 
political rights of the people. The old feudal land law, 
in its essential character, the law governing indus- 
trial and mercantile contracts, the law of personal 
relationships, and the bulk of the criminal law, were 
only reformed within living memory by the slow action 
cf popular custom and judicial interpretation, — not to 
say by judicial collusions. 

In contrast to the process of the rise of a Legisla- 
tive, as distinguished from an Executive, Authority on 
the dissolution of Feudalism, may be taken the case 
of the establishment of a Legislative Authority in 
the Koman Kepublic and Empire. In the earliest 
strictly historical times the consuls, praetors, quaes- 
tors, aediles, and the rest, including afterwards the 
tribunes, represent a strong and all but omnipotent 
Executive. The only checks on absolutism were the 
constitution itself, so far as there was one, and the 
Civil Law. The Senate and the various Comitia were, 
at the outset and for ages afterwards, only a machinery 
for electing the different members of the Executive, for 
deciding matters relating to Foreign affairs, and for pass- 
ing measures of comprehensive legislation only in respect 
of political rights or, what was nearly akin to them, 



THE LEGISLATIVE AUTIIOllITY IN HOME. 95 

of claims to share in the occupation of the national 
soil. When the Comitia were really and effectively 
called upon to engage in the task of radical legal 
reform of a comprehensive nature, it was always at 
some crisis of the national fortunes when some influen- 
tial citizen came to the head of affairs and, by the 
weight of his character or even of his political power, 
overcame the inertness of the unwieldy masses and the 
scruples of oligarchical coteries. 

Such were the circumstances of the legislation of 
the Gracchi, of Sulla, and of Julius Csesar. The vigorous 
and independent legislation of Augustus, still confined 
within the formal precincts of republican ideas, was 
a medium between the legislative efforts of repub- 
lican reformers and the despotic constitutions, decrees, 
rescripts, mandates, and pragmatic sanctions of his 
Imperial successors a few generations later. The full 
legislative effect given to resolutions of the Senate 
marks an intermediate stage in the process of Imperial 
absorption of legislative powers. 

The only correction to this abuse and usurpation lay 
in the necessary constitution of the Empire itself, in 
which the complicated organisation of the civil service 
required by the enormous area of Government led to 
such a natural distribution of powers that the Em- 
peror's legislative, judicial, and administrative functions 
were, in fact, severally exercised by tolerably inde- 
pendent, though bureaucratic officials. The secrecy 
and consequent absence of all responsibility to public 
opinion was only one of the glaring defects of such 
a political constitution. 

Thus the instance of Eome, like that of France in 
the course of the political vicissitudes she has undergone 



96 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

since the first Revolution, exhibits not only the natural 
process of elaborating a Legislative Authority by the 
side of the Executive, but the reverse process of re- 
absorption of the Legislative by the Executive Autho- 
rity, — a danger to which would-be democratic Govern- 
ments are notoriously exposed, at the hands often of the 
military officials of the State. The ordinary legislative 
machinery of Athens was succumbing to one Executive 
chief or cabal after another before Philip of Macedon 
took upon him to personate all the powers of the 
State ; while Sparta is a memorable instance of a 
State which successfully held on its own narrow course, 
and maintained its parsimonious existence, by ignoring 
from first to last the functions of Legislation, and 
throwing all the weight of Government on the shoulders 
of a captiously watched Executive. 

Here and there, indeed, there are to be found in- 
stances of what at first sight seems to be an even and 
steady process of growth, from the first, of an Executive 
and Legislative Authority, side by side, with ascer- 
tained relations to each other, and with vigilantly 
guarded principles of apportionment. Such may be 
taken to be the primitive rural cantons of Uri and 
Appenzell in Switzerland in w^hich the whole popula- 
tion, to the amount (says a recent traveller^) of 8000 
people in the last mentioned canton, meet on a certain 
day of the year, and choose the Executive officers for 
the year, and do acts of legislation, by adopting or 
rejecting any proposal for legal reform which may be 
brought before them. 

In cases such as this there is undoubtedly witnessed 
a fine and, no doubt, primitive balance between the 

* The Shores and Cities of the Boden-See, by S. J. Capper. 



THE LEGISLATIVE AND THE EXECUTIVE AUTHOIUTY. 97 

Legislative and the Executive which only accidental 
circumstances of an exceptionally favourable kind could 
have made possible. But even there it would be found 
on closer inspection that the very roughness of the 
constitutional mechanism, and the multitudinousness 
of the legislative body, excludes (as was the case with 
the popular comitia in the last days of the Roman Re- 
public) the consideration of any proposal which cannot 
be formulated in such a way as to admit only of two 
alternative courses, adoption or rejection, simple and 
entire. This necessity is a consequence not only of the 
numbers, but of the heterogeneousness, inconstancy, 
and political unfamiliarity of a mass of people of all 
ranks and conditions, meeting together no oftener than 
once a year. This of itself excludes the bulk of the 
Legislation required by an advancing country for pre- 
scribing rules to the Executive, for supervising and 
checking its course, for correcting accidental abuses in 
the current execution of the Law, and for applying 
amendments to Laws which are either becoming ob- 
solete, or which, from one cause or another, no longer 
approve themselves to the public mind or conscience. 

When it is remembered how unsuitable are the 
primitive democratic assemblies alluded to for even 
moderate legislative tasks like these, it is evident that 
they are Legislative Authorities in little more than 
name, though, inasmuch as they choose the Executive, 
and can potentially alter the whole law, they do truly 
constitute such Authorities. In modern Switzerland 
the paramount authority of the Federal Government 
renders these local institutions mainly interesting as 
historical fossils and as political illustrations. 



98 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

In what has been said, at some length, of the nature 
and growth of the Legislative Authority, there has 
been incidentally disclosed the meaning of the term 
Executive and the scope of the conception which the 
term is used to express. The Executive Authority and 
the Legislative Authority together compose the whole 
Supreme Political Authority which in any State always 
has, theoretically, absolute power over all members of 
the State for all purposes whatsoever, and which in 
fact also has it except in case of Revolution, of 
approximate Revolution, or of serious civic discord. 
There is, at any given moment, no theoretical limit to 
the powers latent in this Authority. The only prac- 
tical limit is set by the chances of Revolution or of a 
supercession of the existing Supreme Authority by a 
new one in case of popular disaffection. 

This Supreme Authority may consist of one person 
or of several ; and if of several, they may either be 
precisely determined and have definite relations to each 
other, — as in the case of the English King or Queen, 
the members of the House of Lords in their corporate 
capacity, and the members of the House of Commons, 
similarly in their corporate capacity ; or the Supreme 
Authority may consist of an indefinite number of 
j)ersons accurately, but not precisely, determined, — as 
in the case of that number of persons in the United 
States of America, who throughout the several States 
are required to co-operate in order to effect a change 
in a constitutional Law. 

It has already been seen that the Supreme Autho- 
rity at the first is of simple and homogeneous structure, 
and exerts its powers of Government solely by a series 
of executive Acts. A Legislative Authority concerned 



THE TEKM EXECUTIVE. 99 

with prescribing rules of action for the Government, 
and amending the customary usages in force among 
the people, slowly grows up within the precincts of the 
Supreme Authority, and the result is a sort of distri- 
bution of organs and of functions recalling the gradual 
composition and internal differentiation of the higher 
classes of organised bodies. 

What shall be the final relationship between the 
Legislative Authority so developed and the Executive 
Authority which it vigilantly watches, and on which it 
has encroached, is one of the most arduous problems 
of constitutional Statesmanship, and one to which 
modern ingenuity, — as will be seen hereafter in dis- 
cussing the Constitution of a State, — is mainly directed. 

At the time of founding the Constitution of the 
United States, there was no question on which more able 
and acute speculation was expended than the relationship 
between the Legislative and the Executive Authority;^ 
and the final solution adopted of a Supreme Court of 
Justice, independent of the Legislative Authority, and 
a President elected by the people independently of 
Congress, absolute for Executive purposes during a four 
years' term of office, is an experiment as to the success 
of which well-founded doubts have in the course of 
time suggested themselves, as will be seen later on. 

Sometimes the term Executive^ which strictly means 
an Authority which puts the laws in force, is opposed 
to the term Administrative^ which implies the perform- 
ance of every other sort of immediate Governmental 
act, such as collecting taxes, organising and directing 
the Army, Navy, and Police, supervising trade, loco- 
motion, postal communication, and carrying out in 
See the writers in the Federalist generally. 



100 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

detail legislative measures for promoting public health, 
education, morality, and general contentment ; such as 
in Imperial Rome demanded public shows and a dis- 
tribution of food on cheap terms to large classes of the 
population. 

But the term Administrative is, — especially in 
scientific and constitutional treatises, — less used than 
Executive ; and the distinction is not very convenient, 
inasmuch as there is a large class of subordinate 
oflBcials, — such as the English ^policemen,' — who have 
an assemblage of multifarious duties cast upon them 
connected with the revenue, and with the preservation 
of public order and decorum, which are almost as im- 
portant as their task of apprehending offenders and 
facilitating the administration of Justice. In the same 
way the functions of certain of the higher English 
Judges, — who co-operate with the Crown in the Ex- 
chequer to appoint Sheriffs of Counties, — are adminis- 
trative rather than, according to the distinction in 
question, executive. On the whole it is best to use one 
term. Executive, to express the portion of the Supreme 
Authority which is not Legislative in the full and true 
sense, and only to oppose Executive to Administrative^ 
when, for a special purpose, it is necessary to consider 
apart from all other functions the function of ensuring 
obedience, in detail, to the Law as it is. 

5. Right. Frerogative, 
Jurists have often attempted to analyse the ideas 
which enter into the notion designated by the term 
Right, Some such term appears in the political ter- 
minology of all advanced States. The term usuallj^ 
connotes, in one country and period, some idea or ideas 



THE TERM RIGHT, 101 

wliicli do not elsewhere present themselves. Thus 
in the E<]^jptian language, as commemorated by the 
hieroglyphical writing of the earliest dynasties, the 
same syllabic group of signs indicates the notions of 
justice, truth, moral righteousness, and political law, 
though, one and anotlier of these distinct notions are 
also expressed by special groups. In Greece the terais 
hUr] and vofMos share between them the notions expressed 
in Rome, according to a slightly different distribution, 
hj jus and lex. The Greek v6/io9 covers the meaning of 
positive enactment chiefly conveyed by lex, but it also 
covers some of the meaning of settled constitutional 
morality conveyed by jits. But in the Latin jus there 
is an element of abstract morality which is only to be 
found in vo/jlo^ in its sense of primitive distribution. 

The German recht and the French droit are nearly 
coextensive in signification with each other and with 
the Latin jus. The English word right does not in- 
clude the technical legal meaning of recht, droit, and 
jus, that is, it does not mean a body of purely legal 
rules ; and the English term is far more loose and 
unsettled on its ethical side. It is, in fact, only in the 
sense of a claim recognisable either by the State, by 
abstract morality, or by conventional sentiment that it 
squares pretty exactly with one of the meanings of the 
corresponding term in the Latin, German, and French 
languages. 

From this terminological enquiry it appears that 
the best consolidated States have found the need of 
appropriate terms for the several distinct notions, first, 
of settled and generally binding law, whether as based 
on positive legislation or on judicially enforced custom; 
secondly, of long established usage, binding on the 



102 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

lepfislative and executive Authorities, and even on the 
indefinite mass of persons to whom those Authorities 
are responsible and ovre their existence ; thirdly, of indi- 
vidual claims founded upon such lav^r or such established 
usage. The English term ricjlii^ so far as it has a defi- 
nite meaning for poHtical purposes, expresses the third 
of these notions, that is, the claim of a private person or 
an assemblage of private persons, accorded either bylaw 
or by well-understood usage, which, whether grounded on 
absolute morality or on conventional public sentiment, 
has all the force of law, and even more than this force, 
being anterior and superior to it, though it may need 
the intervention or even the enactment of positive law 
to give it practical effect. 

When the claim expressed by the term right is based 
on strict law, the purport and limits of the claim share 
that precise exactness which belongs strictly only to 
law. A claim being accorded to one person at the ex- 
pense of another or others, one of the most prominent 
functions of Courts of Justice is that of ascertaining 
what is the measure of concession which the law has 
granted in favour of one litigant in derogation of the 
general claims to unrestricted action enjoyed by an- 
other. Thus the claim in question may be described 
as a ' power,^ but as exercisable only through the use 
of certain definite instruments. It is thus only ana- 
logical, at the most, to a physical force or to material 
machinery. It matters not whether it can or cannot 
be described as existing for the benefit of the person 
exercising the claim. If it is not for his benefit, 
directly or indirectly, he can forbear to exercise it. 
Thus even a trustee or guardian has rights, the direct 
advantage of the exercise of which is wholly restricted 



THE TERM RIGHT. 103 

to other persons ; but, inasmuch as the rights may have 
to be exercised by the trustee or guardian in order to 
fulfil his personal responsibility to a Court of Justice, 
the existence of the rights might be described as being 
indirectly advantageous to him. 

The more politically important signification of the 
term right is that which attaches to it when the claim 
indicated by it is based on what in England is known 
as constitutional usage. But the term is undoubtedly 
used, for political purposes, in a wider and less exact 
sense than this. It has, on some memorable historical 
occasions, been employed as co-extensive with a claim 
based on abstract morality, that is, on such notions of 
morality as prevail at the day. It is also used in cur- 
rent political controversy in an intermediate sense, as 
indicating a claim more precise and more readily as- 
certained than any that merely ethical considerations 
could suggest, and yet less distinctly formulated than 
a claim founded on the actual or traditional constitu- 
tion of the country. 

The American ' Declaration of Independence/ and 
the French ^Declaration of the Eights of Man,^ abound 
in ethical assumptions purporting to be the foundation 
of political claims which, — whether justifiable or not as 
scientific propositions, — are (as Bentham pointed out 
in detail,) far too vague and undefined to form part of 
the constitutional morality of any State whatever. The 
English ' BiU of Eights,' containing as it did a series of 
propositions in the closest relation to actual historical 
facts and documents, may be contrasted favourably with 
the corresponding French and American proclamations. 
Not indeed that these latter served their immediate 
purpose less effectually because of their vague and 



104 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

unrestricted language. On the contrary, as Coleridgo 
pointed out, nothing is so popular, and, therefore, at 
some periods so perilous, as comprehensive doctrines 
conveyed in the briefest of phrases. They often, never- 
theless, have a truth of their own, and correspond to 
some true and irrepressible instinct or aspiration which 
they rouse into energy, however impotent they may be 
to direct or restrain it. This subject, however, more 
properly belongs to the theory of Revolutions. 

Much ambiguity in the conduct of political con- 
troversy ensues from the common confusion of the 
various uses of the term right. Thus it was for some 
time a question in the English Courts to what extent, 
if any, the status of slavery was recognised by the Law 
of England. It was, after careful judicial reasoning, 
decided towards the end of the eighteenth century (in 
Sommersett's case) that a slave, if brought to an English 
port, had a right to recover and maintain his freedom. 
At the same time no such right was admitted as to the 
port of an English Colony. But in the first quarter of 
the nineteenth century it was argued on all sides that 
slaves in British Colonies had a right to their freedom, in 
the sense of a right to have freedom conferred upon them 
by law. In the third quarter of the same century it be- 
came a matter of burning political controversyin America 
how far the right of a slave to his freedom was a legal 
right ; or, if it were not so, whether it had only ceased 
to be so through an initial violence to the constitution, 
and so was still a constitutional though not a legal right ; 
or if it were neither a legal nor a constitutional right, 
whether it were not an abstract moral right, w^hich no law 
nor constitution could outrage consistently with the con- 
tinued welfare, stability, or even existence of the State. 



THE TERM PEEROGATIFE. 105 

Similar ambiguities in the use of the term right have 
notably presented themselves in controversies on the 
suffrage, on the tenure of land, and in respect of some 
of the finer shades of exemption from any personal 
degradation used as a mode of criminal punishment. 
Questions as to what are a person's rights, — human, 
constitutional, legal, or merely conventional, — have, of 
late, entered largely into discussions on claims to 
appropriate the soil of a country, on claims to vote at 
parliamentary or municipal elections, and on claims to 
absolute immunity from cruel or so-called derogatory 
punishments. 

The term prerogative is closely parallel to right as 
being based on established constitutional usage; though, 
in England at least, its employment as a political term is 
restricted to expressing the constitutional claims of the 
Sovereign. But, owing to the course of development of 
the English Constitution by which the limitation of 
the personal authority of the Sovereign has been only 
gradually achieved by slow marches from point to point, 
the term, prerogative covers, at present, the constitutional 
rights of the Sovereign as one of the Estates of the 
Realm and as the chief executive Authority, — which 
rights are exercisable only in certain definite channels, 
by the aid of ministerial agents responsible to Parlia- 
ment, — and also those indefinite and dignified personal 
claims of the Sovereign which the progress of Consti- 
tutional Government has not yet invaded. To this last 
class, of purely personal claims, belongs the important 
one of deciding in the last resort between one candidate 
and another for the post of Prime Minister, when each 
candidate has, presumably, equal chances of command- 



106 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

ing the confidence of the Legislature. A similar, but 
more disputable, claim is that of dismissing, without 
cause assigned, a Minister who renders himself per- 
sonally obnoxious, though probably a capricious use of 
this prerogative would lead to its limitation. The pre- 
rogatives concerned with precedents of all sorts are, 
in a political sense, too trivial to need being further 
particularised, even for the sake of terminological illus- 
tration. 



107 



CHAPTER III. 

POLITICAL REASONING. 

In the course of the investigation into the scientific 
claims of Political enquiries, it appeared that one ob- 
stacle to the successful assertion of those claims was 
the necessity for immediate action, by which even the 
most speculative statesman is beset on every side. A 
critical opportunity arrives, and the statesman mnst 
act promptly or annihilate himself altogether. There 
may be only a limited number of directions in which 
action is possible; and one of these directions must 
be chosen ; and yet it may be one which is very far 
from good in itself. The utmost that a sagacious 
statesman can do is to anticipate such moments of 
hurried action by giving a beneficial direction to the 
general course of his conduct, and by persisting in it at 
times when no passions are aroused, when no strong 
prejudices or antipathies have had time to consolidate 
themselves, when no interests prejudicial to the general 
good have become vested. The statesman's own personal 
influence may also do much to awaken feelings favour- 
able to his own preconceptions of a rational course of 
policy, and, at the worst, he can bend into judicious 
and modified lines determinate resolves which he cannot 
breat. 

In this way it comes about that, provided political 



108 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

phenomena admit of scientific arrangement and treat- 
ment at all^ the logically-disposed statesman will always 
find opportunities for a course of action dictated by 
purely scientific considerations. Nor is it true that 
the democratic constitution of modern States, if more 
favourable to rhetoric than to logic, is inimical to 
scientific government. Mr. Grote was at great pains, 
in his ^History of Greece,' to establish that, in spite of 
the enormous play which rhetoric and oratory, un- 
doubtedly, had with an Athenian audience, yet, on the 
whole, a disposition was manifested on momentous 
occasions to act on purely logical grounds, to reconsider 
again and again hasty decisions, and to give a hearing 
to all sides impartially before drawing a conclusion. 
If, notwithstanding these instances, the Athenian people 
were lacking often enough in practical wisdom, this 
was only one among many proofs of the insufiiciency 
of their political constitution and the backwardness of 
political science. 

In the case of moderiL democratic Assemblies, it 
would seem that the tendency of popular education, 
the influence of the Press, and the pressure exercised 
by the free right of public meeting and association, all 
conduce to restrict increasingly the power exercised by 
rhetoricians and demagogues. If the English House 
of Commons is taken as the most aristocratic type of a 
democratically constituted assembly, and the Lower 
House of a British Colony, however denominated, as 
the most democratic type of the same, it would be 
found that, in both the one and the other, the most 
convincing of all arguments are those drawn on the 
spot from statistical considerations, or from evidence 
sifted by commissions or from the reports of recognised 



POLITICAL RE.VSONIXa. 109 

authorities on the subject under discussion. Mere 
rhetoric, volubility, declamation, even passion and 
party spirit, make a more and more feeble stand 
against antagonists armed with such purely logical 
weapons as these; or, if a momentary victory is won, 
the fruits of it are worthless, for it is inevitably 
reversed at an early day, so soon as the outside 
public has had time to master the issues and deliver its 
judgment. 

The place that pure reasoning is thus found to be 
taking in the conduct of Government leads the way to 
consider whether inductive or deductive methods of 
reasoning are likely to be most prominent in this de- 
partment of thought, and whether there are any pecu- 
liarities in the extension of common logical processes 
to the field of Politics which need special notice. Sir 
George Cornewall Lewis, in his invaluable treatise on 
' Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics,' 
has given an exhaustive statement of all that can be 
said on this subject, and has illustrated it with the 
wealth of his rare erudition. But the Tcry complete- 
ness of this work renders it unsuitable for incorporation 
in a treatise which, like this, professes to cover the 
whole ground of scientific Politics ; while, on the other 
hand, it would be unjust to the learned critic to sever 
his conclusions from his arguments and illustrations 
in order to give a compendious enunciation of their 
general results. 

The distinction drawn between inductive and de- 
ductive methods is rather of psychological than of prac- 
tical importance. There is hardly any department of 
scientific investigation, which has progressed beyond 
its initial stages, where both methods are not inces- 
6 



110 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

santly and alternately resorted to. In those sciences 
which, by their nature^, are the least stationary, it is 
impossible to sa y, at any particular moment, which is 
the most characteristic and prominent organ of search. 
On the face of it, it would appear that the framing of 
general or universal propositions is peculiarly alien to 
the scientific temper in Politics. It might be said with 
truth that here if anywhere dolus latet in generalihus. 
The most erroneous theories and destructive fallacies 
have, undoubtedly, proceeded from an attempt to in- 
clude in some sweeping generalisations all the varied 
conditions due to differences of time, place, and acci- 
dent. But, because a logical method has been used 
wrongly or inappropriately, this is no sufficient argu- 
ment against its being used at all. Nor does the mere 
difficulty of using it rightly justify its neglect, or even 
disentitle it to its rank as a primary instrument of 
thought. 

Nor, indeed, are the facts, when fairly examined, 
adverse to the claims of deductive reasoning in Political 
studies. The progressive advance of these studies, as 
in the case of the physical sciences, has led to the 
framing of an increasing number of general proposi- 
tions of incontrovertible cogency. It is only necessary 
to cite the broad doctrines that the end of Government 
is the highest attainable good of the largest number of 
people present and to come ; that, by way of corollary. 
Government and Governmental institutions exist for the 
advantage of the whole people, and not of the rulers 
only or of any other limited section of the w^hole people ; 
that the interference of Government with prices, w^ages, 
contracts, or with the operations of industry generally, 
is presumptively less conducive to national wealth than 



DEDUCTIVE POLITICAL EEASONING. Ill 

the permission of unrestricted freedom, and, — if resorted 
to at all, — can only be justified by some considerations of 
an entirely different kind ; that stringent constitutional 
precautions are needed against abuses by the Executive 
Authority ; that criminal punishments must not be 
cruel, vindictive, or only retaliatory, but should be 
devised and imposed with the main end in view of 
preventing the recurrence of offences, and be rendered, 
as far as may be, compatible with the secondary end, 
of promoting the personal amendment of the criminal ; 
and that (by way of a final example) the chief Judicial 
Authority should be rendered independent of the other 
departments of the Executive Authority. 

It may be said that the truth of these and such 
like propositions is very far from being everywhere 
accepted, — still less acted upon. It might be added 
that, as to some of the propositions themselves, their 
application must be restricted to certain countries 
and conditions of society, that what may be true in 
Western communities is only true under certain limita- 
tions in the East, and that the propositions are even 
reversed in different stages of the growth of the same 
society. In fact the propositions themselves, it might 
be argued in disparagement, are only valuable when 
accompanied by all sorts of limiting qualifications and 
hypothetical additions; or in other words, they are 
true only so far as they cease to be propounded as 
universal or even general. 

But while to recal such imperfections in the gene- 
rality of the propositions of Political Science is an 
indispensable key to their true use, yet it is easy, for 
rhetorical purposes, to exaggerate the real significance 
of all such limitations. The generality of many poli- 



112 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

tieal propositions^ of the kind above cited in illustra- 
tion, is found to increase with every advance in political 
improvement and with every extension of all the best 
elements of what is known as civilisation. It is not so 
much that the propositions are generally true, as that 
they tend to become more and more indisputably 
accepted as true. The limitations, on the other hand, 
are becoming more and more partial and insignificant, 
and are driven further and further into the background 
of the argument. In fact, the conduct of political 
controversy at present, whether in formally assembled 
Chambers, in public but informal discussions, or in 
private and select conversation, exhibits the increasing 
prevalence of a growing series of general propositions 
the truth of which is, for serious argumentative pur- 
poses, held by disputants, on both or all sides, to be 
beyond the reach of doubt. 

It is an interesting exhibition of this fact to notice 
the process at work on all sides, by which the general 
premises of political syllogisms are being gradually 
fashioned by a joint use of inductive and deductive 
methods. Thus, by way of illustration, it is still 
a most unsettled point in this country whether an 
income tax is or is not a wise or justifiable source of 
national income ; whether direct taxation has any con- 
clusive advantage ovar all kinds of indirect taxation ; 
whether the land of a country can or cannot be appro- 
priated by private owners in the same way as money, 
the fruits of the soil, and manufactured products ; 
whether central or local control, or a combination of 
both, is most applicable to such topics as police, poor 
relief, sanitary improvements, and expenditure for 
economical objects; and, lastly, whether the care of 



THE EXPEKIMENTAL METHOD IN POLITICS. 1J3 

such works as irrigation, locomotion, and postal and 
telegraphic communication, belongs most fitly to the 
State or to such private persons or associations as may 
choose to undertake them. 

Some of these problems are more nearly approaching 
solution and final settlement than others. In respect 
of all of them, the primary instrument of research is 
the observation of the results of actual experiments in 
a variety of countries, whether these experiments were 
intentionally conducted among more or less rigorouslj 
superintended surroundings, or were only the outcome 
of fortuitous social conditions. The proper use of this 
instrument implies the usual attention to the ' infirma- 
tory' circumstances which physical science has rendered 
so familiar as impairing the value of observed facts. 

Mr. John Stuart Mill pointed out, in his ' Logic/ 
the impossibility of conducting any real experiment in 
Politics. For the conduct of any true experiment, not 
only must all relevant circumstances be fully and accu- 
rately known, but the elements of the enquiry must 
admit of being altered, modified, multiplied, reduced, 
and readjusted at will. It is obvious that, owing to the 
element of human personality which is the leading fact 
in all political problems, and to the extraordinary in- 
fluence of the past, however recent, on the future, no 
combination of circumstances can ever be repeated even 
once, let alone often. And apart from the possibility 
of repetition, with exactly estimated variations at wdll, 
a true experiment is impossible. What is often called 
an experiment in Politics, — as for instance the imposi- 
tion of a novel tax, or the introduction of a constitu- 
tional change in the Government of a Dependency, — is, 
in fact, nothing but a slight and special extension of the 



Ill THE SCIE^'CE OF TOLITICS. 

field of purely historical enquiry, and is liable to many 
of its characteristic defects. Even the use of statistical 
results is only a i^eculiarly precise and formal mode of 
conducting the methods of search implied in reference 
to History and to the reports of travellers in other coun- 
tries. In all their forms, History and Travels are the 
chief sources for the facts to which observation must 
be directed for the purpose of founding general political 
propositions. 

In a remarkable chapter of the book already alluded 
to, Sir G. C. Lewis has carefully scrutinised the claims 
of History to serve as a source for the ascertainment of 
Political truth ; and his remarks should be well studied 
as, at the least, a complete statement of the perils 
attending the mis-reading of History, and the common 
sophistical arguments founded on distorted historical 
facts. It is probably rather in the broader, than in the 
narrower, survey of the historical field that political 
truth is to be discovered ; and the comprehensive view 
of the whple past, taken by such political philosophers 
as Auguste Comte, is less liable to generate political 
error than the examination of the working of any 
single institution or group of institutions, in a par- 
ticular country. 

The wider causes of the political deterioration of 
Rome, — such as the inadequacy of the aristocratic 
Senate to represent, to control, or to resist, the ever 
growing multitude of the Commons, and the operation 
of the system of land tenure and of slaveholding, as 
well as the concentration of wealth in the hands of a 
few, — are unmistakable indications of permanent ten- 
dencies in human affairs, and, when cautiously stated, 
afford safe general premises for political reasoning. 



PREMISES OF POLITICAL REASONING. 115 

But causes of the above nature, — while they are only 
ascertained and understood and distinctly formulated 
after a patient study of all the accessible authorities, 
and, as matter of fact, are by no means beyond the reacli 
of controversy yet, — existed during some centuries, and 
were, some of them, at last co-extensive in their action 
with the Roman Empire. 

The general truth that a constitutional structure 
which is defective for purposes of confederation and 
the want of a spirit of cohesion are fatal to the political 
existence of a number of small States, inhabited by the 
same race, and having common interests and even 
sympathies, is certainly illustrated and enforced by the 
broad facts of the History of Greece and of the British 
Colonies in America. 

Similarly, the history of modern France may fairly 
be held to establish the fact that, in proportion as civili- 
sation and education become equally diffused, a purely 
selfish s^^stem of Government, in the interests of a 
narrow class, becomes impossible, and if a change is not 
brought about by timely reform, revolutionary violence 
will attend the first social pressure or disaster, whether 
occasioned by famine, by war, or by casual excitement. 
The same truth has been abundantly driven home by 
the recent history of other European countries; and 
England has enjoyed of late a fortunate pre-eminence 
in illustrating the same truth, by showing that revolu^ 
tion can be prevented by anticipating too loud a popular 
cry for reform, and by making concessions just in time 
to save the appearance of their being extorted by force. 

Such broad historical lessons go far to encourage 
and direct the statesman, as well as to support him in 
the advocacy of principles of action which may, at the 



116 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

moment, be unpopular in the particular region in 
which he has to work. But they are of too indefinite 
and extensive a kind to be the basis of specific courses 
of action, and therefore can hardly be abused for a 
dangerous purpose. It is otherwise with those minute 
historical parallels which often furnish the food of 
adroit rhetoricians, and against which an imperfectly 
informed audience cannot always be on its guard. 

Because the Senate of Rome was, at one period, one 
of the ablest administrative assemblies ever known, it 
is argued that a narrow aristocratic Assembly (however 
composed) is the indispensable complement of every 
sound political constitution, and even has certain 
transparent advantages over eyerj other form of 
Assembly. Again, because the same Senate of Eome 
became oligarchical, despotic, and corrupt, therefore 
every other second Chamber of an aristocratical kind, 
has, and must ever have, identically the same character- 
istics. Because it was proved to be impolitic to tax in 
a certain way the thirteen American Colonies, therefore, 
it is argued, no English dependencies, to the end of 
time, ought to be required to bear their share of the 
expenditure incurred for their defence. Or, on the 
other hand, because the American colonies have pros- 
pered through their separation, therefore no effort is to 
be made by suitable economic settlements, — as between 
the Australian or South African Colonies and the 
mother country, — to retain the loyal adhesion of 
Colonies. It is obvious, at once, that arguments such 
as these are superficial and worthless in the extreme. 
Nevertheless they constantly appear and reappear, not 
only on platforms and in newspapers, but in the most 
serious debates in Legislative Assemblies. 



ilFASONING BASED ON REPOKTS Oi<' TRAVELLERS. 117 

The spurious reasoning based on the reports of 
travellers is almost more familiar than the perverse 
misreading of History. In the latter part of the last 
century, Montesquieu and Kousseau gave popularity to 
all sorts of political theories, some true and most of 
them false, by adducing alleged practices adopted in 
imperfectly known communities. Rousseau, indeed, 
enforced this line of argument by his panegyrics on a 
State of Nature, in virtue of which he held social and 
political conditions to be commendable in proportion 
as they receded backward from the prevalent habits of 
the civilised States of the West. 

Such vagaries of the imagination, indeed, have no 
place in the political reasoning of the present day. 
But, in their place, a true comparative science, based 
on attention to the rude usages of uncivilised com- 
munities, has attained inordinate proportions as supplj^- 
ing a wholly satisfactory clue to thb nature of man and 
of human society. The modern reports of travellers 
differ from the old in being exact, full, diversified, 
multiplied, and exposed to every mode of critical test. 
They are prepared with the help of all the acumen 
and statistical completeness habitual in purely physical 
investigations. 

The result is that what have been long regarded 
as fundamental institutions of society are felt to 
have their authority shaken, and their permanence 
endangered. Monogamic marriage, the domestic affec- 
tions, the spiritual equality of man and woman, the 
advantages of free institutions, and even of personal 
liberty, which have been long treated as axioms in 
christianised States, are felt to be in a state of solution, 
and to possess only a temporary and relative, — in place 



118 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

of an eternal and absolute — value. Polygamic societies, 
instead of being neglected as data of political thoughts 
or condemned as merely retrograde anomalies, are 
patiently investigated as important political experi- 
ments, and even indulgently nurtured in order to 
prolong the process of social vivisection. Wide-spread 
religious systems, confessedly false and corrupting, are 
not only protected, but encouraged and stimulated, on 
the ground of their possibly having some permanent 
affinity for certain races of mankind. Even cruel and 
obviously barbarous rites are witnessed with toleration^ 
and are repressed with timidity, for fear of their con- 
cealing some yet unrecognised elements of humanity 
which, if left alone, will one day be appreciated and 
tabulated. 

All this speaks of a primary and transitory phase in 
the true use for political purposes of the information 
supplied by travellers. No doubt the practices of races 
yet in their infancy, and uninfluenced by contact with 
people more advanced than' themselves, may throw 
much light on the general nature of man in the earlier 
stages of the transition from all but animalism to a 
genuine humanity. The fault in the reasoning arises 
when it is attempted to draw from any number of such 
observations, however varied and scrutinised, conclu- 
sions as to the nature and requirements of man in a 
social and political condition. It may be that even yet 
civilisation has not advanced far enough for any uni- 
versal propositions to be laid down as to man's essential 
nature and possibilities. But, because these are still 
unknown, that is no sufficient reason for resorting to 
a wholly fictitious process in order to put on the ap- 
pearance of scientific inquiry. It is, of course, helpful. 



COGNATE DEPAIITMIi:NTS OF THOUGHT. 119 

in prosecuting a research into the indispensable con- 
ditions of man in society and under Government, to 
know as much as possible about him under all other 
conditions. But the most complete knowledge of him, 
under these other conditions, must be used with the 
greatest caution and self-restraint, in the course of con- 
verting truths applicable to man in his closest alliance 
with the animal, into truths applicable to him in that 
state of which the main characteristic is that the 
physical and animal nature of the individual man is 
wholly and finally subordinated to the spiritual nature 
of man as a member of a political society. 

Besides the diflBculty of framing general political 
propositions arising from the obscurity and the com- 
plexity of the subject-matter, whether past or present, to 
which alone observation can extend, — there is another 
logical difficulty, appertaining to the scientific treatment 
of Politics, which is peculiar to the present age, and is 
closely connected with some of the peculiar advantages 
for the prosecution of rigorous political thought w^hich 
this age pre-eminently possesses. This difficulty relates 
to the due use and co-ordination of general propositions 
borrowed from other, but cognate, departments of 
thought and research, such as Economics, Statistics, 
Ethics, and Law. While, as has been more than once 
observed already, it is a pledge of the growing com- 
pleteness of political studies that these increasingly 
exact topics are being imported into all serious political 
controversies, it is none the less essential for their due 
use, and for the purpose of saving them from early 
obloquy and distrust, that the syllogistic reasoning 
based upon the propositions to which they severally give 



120 THE SCIEXCE OF POLITICS. 

rise should be fairly and strictly conducted. To the dis- 
proportionate and extravagant prominence, from time 
to time given to one and another economic or ethical pro- 
position, — of undoubted truth within its own limits, — 
may be traced some of the strangest vagaries of modern 
politics, and some prevalent delusions which, when once 
they have obtained a hold, can hardly be dislodged. 

To give a casual illustration of the danger here 
adverted to, it is sufficient to notice the extraordinary 
influence in the political world exercised by Malthus' 
very moderate and temperately stated argument to the 
effect that population tends to increase at a greater 
ratio than the means of subsistence. This was a mixed 
social, economic, and physical, fact, which might be 
used in all sorts of ways by political reasoners. As it 
happened, it has been almost exclusively used to en- 
force the opinion that it should be the object of all 
legislators, in all European countries at the least, to 
repress, and not to encourage, the groAvth of population. 

It is a recognised economical truth that the sub- 
stitution of machinerj for hand labour tends to in- 
crease national wealth, to promote a rise in wages, to 
multiply employments, and to benefit the labouring 
class. But it is also true that the sudden introduction 
of machinerj^ on a large scale, into an industry con- 
ducted by hand labour, is usually attended, at first, 
by wide-spread distress and poverty. To build a 
national policy — so far as policy is concerned — on the 
first of these propositions, to the neglect of the second, 
must lead to disastrous consequences, and often has 
led to them during the present century, especially 
through the administrative action of Government 
itself, operating as an employer on the largest scale. 



RILLACIES IN POLITICAL EEASONING. 121 

In an important chapter of his ^ Treatise on Morals 
and Legislation/ Bentham discusses the element of 
' Time and Place ' in Legislation ; and it is jnst in 
neglecting this element that the most abusive employ- 
ment of newly-fledged ethical and economical propo- 
sitions takes place. The customary arguments for and 
against ' Capital Punishment ^ illustrate this class of 
logical perils. Thus it is admitted as a proposition of 
legislative science that there are certain advantages and 
certain disadvantages in retaliatory punishments. One 
class of disputants dwell exclusively on the advantages, 
and recommend capital punishment. Another class 
dwell only on the disadvantages, and object to it. In 
formal reasoning, the advantages and the disadvan- 
tages ought to be stated together, and set over against 
each other. 

But even when this is done, there is still the question 
of time and place. It may be well to teach savages 
what death means, by a public instruction of the most 
open and ceremonious kind. It may also be well to 
teach a generally civilised people what a reverence for 
life is, by abstaining from judicial homicide. The intro- 
duction of private executions in England shows that 
this last argument is acquiring force in the present age. 
The argument against retaliatory punishments, in an 
advanced state of society, is used against the resort to 
flogging for any offences whatever, even of the most 
brutal description. An argument in favour of such 
punishments, as applied to the same offences, is urged 
on the ground that the criminals and their associates 
in such cases are tarrying behind the rest of society and 
can only be affected by the ocular demonstration of the 
connexion of wrongdoing with physical pain. 



122 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

In all these and like cases, a certain amount of 
attention to the several propositions affirmed is due; 
but too much is often made of them through their 
being isolated from other important rival propositions, 
through their being stated in too unqualified a shape, 
or through too much or too little credit being given to 
the actual results of empirical experience under certain 
well- ascertained conditions. 

A pernicious example of delusive reasoning of this 
sort is supplied in all those cases in which igno- 
rant credulity assumes i;lie aspect of a modest de- 
ference to superior scientific attainments, believed to 
be possessed by a limited class of specialists, in certain 
lines of enquiry calling for an exceptional amount of 
protracted study and mental absorption. This is par- 
ticularly the case in the various departments of the 
medical profession. And yet, the greater the amount 
of studious absorption and undeviating devotion which 
medical specialists are required to bestow on their 
occupations, the greater are the time, thought, and 
energy which they must withdraw from social and 
political pursuits. 

It is, then, no disparagement of medical practi- 
tioners to assert that, prima faciei they are less likely, 
--though analogous cautions are needed in the case 
of religious ministers, military and naval officers, philo- 
sophical students, and the devotees of the physical 
sciences general]}^, — to be wise political advisers than 
persons more conversant with the broader fields of 
human affairs. Nevertheless, in practice it is found 
that a notorious logical confusion prevails, by which the 
value of a purely physiological, medical, or sanitary, 
fact is imported into an entirely different field, and 



FALLACIES IN POLITICAL EEASONING. 123 

made the basis of instantaneous and reckless legisla- 
tion. The fact in question may, in itself, be of great 
importance, but it needs to be laid patiently side by 
side with other facts, relating to such matters as public 
liberty, police administration, centralised or localised 
authority, espionage. Government interference, and 
perhaps public morality, before legislation can wisely 
take place. The authority, howev^er, of the specialist 
in his own department is not discriminated from his 
authority, or want of authority, as a political adviser, 
and, in a moment of public apathy, facile legislation 
takes place, which it may take years of effort to undo. 

It would be useless to attempt even to indicate all 
the kinds of false and abusive reasoning which creep 
into political arguments and often lead to dangerous 
practical consequences. Indeed it is the custom with 
writers on Logic to draw some of their most effective 
illustrations of fallacies and sophistries from the field 
of Politics. Owing to the extraordinary but, at the 
moment, unrecognised dominion which custom and 
tradition exercise over the minds of each generation, 
at any given time there are usually found to prevail a 
number of unconsciously held political beliefs and pre- 
mises having a wide-spread operation, the real force of 
which can only with difficulty be estimated at another 
time and under different circumstances. 

Thus, towards the close of the English Civil War, 
and at the Restoration, much attention was drawn to 
idealised political communities such as those portrayed 
by Harrington, Hobbes, Algernon Sydney, and, less 
distinctly, by Milton. It was generally felt that there 
was some type of excellence in political construction 



124 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

which could be followed with advantage by all States^ 
and from which the best organised States only de- 
flected. 

Sir Henry Maine, in his ^ Ancient Law/ pointed out 
how, similarly, the fiction of a ' Social Contract ' became 
a dominant idea in England and France from the middle 
of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century, 
and was only displaced at last by the rise of the modern 
Historical School. The earlier prevalence of the Patri- 
archal and ' Divine Kight ' theories of Government is 
equally notorious. In Greece and Eome the existence 
of slavery was taken as a political premise, as in the 
later Eoman Empire the duty of supporting the estab- 
lishment of Christianity. 

Burke's antipathy to the constitutional proceedings 
of the early leaders of the French Eevolution was mainly 
based on a foreofone conclusion that the Eno^lish consti- 
tution, as re-settled on the accession of William of 
Orange, was the only admissible pattern for all States 
whatever, in all times, and that the modes of conducting 
the English Revolution of 1688, were the only tolerable 
methods of political renovation, w^hatever were the social 
circumstances, or however peculiar w^ere the obstacles 
to be encountered. 

There are still plenty of examples, on all sides, of 
the extraordinary hold taken on those who should be 
self-possessed statesmen by theories antagonistic (if 
exclusively applied) to all Government, to order and to 
public libert3\ These theories are seldom quite destitute 
of truth, and, where they are used as standards of revolt 
against tyrannical injustice and oppression, the elements 
of truth in them are of service as rallying points to 
a scattered and usually indifiFere^/it population. But 



FALLACIES IN POLITICAL EEASONING. 125 

when applied to political construction, they are value- 
less or pernicious. They are even found, owing to the 
one-sided exaggeration Avhich accompanies them, to be 
self-destructive. 

The aspirant for a newly wrought material and 
artificial equality annihilates the sources of production 
by withdrawing the stimulus to accumulate capital, 
and only substitutes general poverty for unevenly but 
widely distributed wealth. The advocate of over- 
Government only succeeds in his ends by sacrificing 
personal freedom, by weakening private and public 
energ}^ and by substituting machinery for life. The 
advocate of doctrines which would restrict Government 
to the mere functions of defending property and order 
must account it a success when the convenience, the 
health, the morality, and the prosperity, of the innu- 
merable weak and poor are placed under the irrespon- 
sible control of the limited number of strong and rich. 

The absolute or divine claims of Kings, of special 
Dynasties, of the People, of Majorities, of Constitutions, 
and even of mobs, whether rich or poor, have all been 
asserted, and are some of them still being asserted on 
many sides with unhesitating assurance, and not with- 
out practical and most unequivocal effect. The only 
remedy or preventive is to be found in applying sound 
logical methods to the subject in hand, with as much 
caution, patience, perseverance, and breadth as well as 
depth of insight, as is now habitually used in the 
pursuit of the physical sciences. 



126 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA OF MODERN POLITICS. 

When principles of Government are to be laid down, 
it is requisite to put some limit to the number of 
countries which, at a particular moment, are to be 
considered. Of course, if Politics is a science, its 
principles are universal and permanent in their ap- 
phcability ; and, for the purpose of drawing inductive 
conclusions, no data supplied from observations con- 
ducted anywhere can be shut out. But, though the 
truths of the science are invariable and irreversible, 
and must be collected from experience gathered in the 
greatest possible variety of situations, it is a misleading 
attempt at generalisation to hold all political commu- 
nities of equal relevancy at a given moment for the 
purpose of political investigation either theoretical 
or practical. 

There is a certain normal condition of a State 
which renders it a hopeful object of sound political 
manipulation, and which fits it in a peculiar degree 
for the function of imparting political lessons. No 
doubt the weakest, the youngest, the most senile, 
the most decrepit. State has its momentary lessons 
on Government to convey, and will benefit from the 
application to it of wise rather than unwise constitu- 
tional adjustment and legislative methods. But, con- 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA OF MODERN POLITICS. 127 

sidering the enormous width of the field if it be not 
limited, and the impediments to exact observation, it is 
important, in proportion to the difficulties of disen- 
tangling what are relevant facts from what are irre- 
levant ones, to select the most remunerative spots and 
to concentrate attention on them, while temporarily 
neglecting those societies which satisfy curiosity and 
afford bases for purely ethnological researches rather 
tlian shed any broad light on politics. 

Such a selection is always unconsciously made in prac- 
tice, though the grounds of it are neither acknowledged 
nor apprehended. The progressive societies of the 
Western World usually arrest political attention at the 
expense of the whole of those of the Eastern, with a few 
noiiceable exceptions, such as Japan, Some countries, 
such as India and (to some extent) even the Australian 
Colonies and China, are regarded with political con- 
cern, less for their own sakes than for the sake of their 
indirect influence on the Governmental action pursued 
in European countries. Some countries attract attention 
for the sake of some special social experiment conducted 
within their limits ; and when the experiment is believed 
to be completed they cease to interest till some new 
emergencies or vicissitudes again force them into promi- 
nence. Such was the case of Russia during the recent 
emancipation of the serfs ; of the several Australian 
colonies again and again, on the successive occasions 
of their trying fresh constitutions ; and of the United 
States, in respect of one and another permanent or 
provisional institution, such as of polygamy in Utah, 
of slavery, of Eederalism in its successive forms, and of 
a series of constitutional variations from time to time 
introduced or practised. 



128 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

A State may either be too young and immature, or 
too effete, or too much subjected to special arresting 
influences, to be counted as a relevant subject of direct 
political action. In the course of development from 
the condition of a mere congeries of tribes, v^ith only 
occasional and most imperfect organisation, to the con- 
dition of a true State, a number of social changes take 
place which all tend one w^ay, though the rate and 
modes of progress admit of all sorts of variations. The 
character of these metamorphic manifestations is of 
course of the greatest interest to the social philosopher, 
the psychologist, and the general historical student ; 
and the revelations of the facts of man's nature ob- 
tained by such investigations, after being properl}^ sifted 
and systematised, can often be turned to direct account 
by the political enquirer. But, as concerned in the 
movements of the political world, or as affording direct 
political instruction, immature States have no place. 

Where immaturity ceases and a true political life 
begins cannot always be decisively determined. But 
the recognition of such a boundary to the field of pro- 
fitable enquiry goes some way to help in drawing the line 
with practical accuracy in the particular cases to w^hich 
alone doubt can extend. The most perplexing cases 
are those of colonial societies or other novel settlements 
founded by politically advanced races. The shock of 
change of place, the experience of new and often arduous 
economical conditions, and the absence of all familiar 
moral guidance and sanctions, place such societies and 
settlements in something of the same position as wholly 
immature tribal communities. Nevertheless, heredi- 
tary acquirements, active intellectual advancement and 
imported constitutional traditions distinguish an im- 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA OF MODERN POLITICS. 129 

migrant race, in some essential political features, 
from an aboriginal people, spontaneously making a 
tentative progress towards civilisation. 

The political interest attaching to the Australian 
colonies and to the newly settled districts in the Western 
States of America is partly related to the peculiar and 
transitory experiments in Government or Sociology that 
are being conducted within their limits, and partly to 
their importance as subordinate parts of the whole 
political systems of England and the United States. It 
satisfies something more than political curiosity to 
ascertain from actual experiments (using this term in 
the loose way against which a caution has already been 
interposed) whether two legislative chambers or one 
are most favourable to the free and secure working of 
Colonial institutions ; whether a purely representative, 
or a conjoint representative and nominative system of 
legislative organisation is most appropriate for the like 
ends ; whether internal Federation among groups of 
colonies, or territories geographically connected, is 
favourable to their own advantage or the advantage of 
the rest of the world. 

But such questions, important as they are in their 
own degree and time and place, are of quite secondary 
moment when compared with such a consideration as 
whether England should follow a policy of binding the 
colonies more closely to herself by some, perhaps yet 
untried, constitutional machinery or should do her 
utmost to precipitate their entire political independence ; 
or with such another consideration as whether the 
Federal system of the United States can resist the strain 
of distance and of vast diversity of local interest which 
threatens its self defensive policy of centralisation. 



130 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Thus, in estimating the geographical area of moderD 
Politics, it is necessarj^ and expedient to exclude from 
consideration the internal political manifestations of all 
Colonies, dependencies, and remote settlements, in pro- 
fessed subordination to an independent State. This 
result further excludes the internal Government of 
British India from direct political cognisance an a 
matter of scientific reflection. 

Owing either to some essential political institutions 
being as yet unformed or interrupted by immigration, 
a State may be in such a condition of stagnation as not 
to figure at all as an integer in the political world. 
This condition of stagnation may be due to mere immo- 
bility of temperament superinduced by continuously 
operating moral or religious causes, or to long-protracted 
oppression by an alien Government, or to illiberal insti- 
tutions which fetter the intellect of the people and 
hamper the growth of national energy. 

It is scarcely necessary to cite in illustration of such 
conditions China even at the present moment ; Japan 
up to the middle of this century ; the countries of 
Middle-Age Europe when crushed beneath the military 
domination of Eome and then when confined wdthin 
the tight leading-strings of the Feudal system. In 
such cases, as before, the political situation is of the 
highest importance, as supplying scientific instruction; 
but to countries so circumstanced no further direct 
political interest extends. 

It is of great importance to notice the earliest 
unmistakable symptoms of independent political life. 
Such symptoms have disclosed themselves of late years 
even in China ; and the waking up of Eussia from a 
long dormant condition marks another recent extension 



THE GEOGKAPHICAL AKEA OE MODERN POLITICS. 131 

of the field of scientific politics. The suppression of 
public liberty and of true political energy in the Asiatic 
States of native India, and in the Asiatic States inter- 
vening between the Ottoman, the Kussian, and the 
British, dominions, in the same way removes all those 
States from the purview of Politics strictly so called. 

A State may not only be immature and stagnant, 
but may have reached a condition, which, by a metaphor 
borrowed from the analogous region of individual human 
life, is often designated as senile. There is a sort of 
exhaustion of faculty, of invention, of national feeling, 
of purpose, which certainly seems to represent the stage 
of life in an individual man at wliich the body has ceased 
to be an adequate instrument of the spirit's activit}^, — 
even if that activity itself is not rendered temporarily 
torpid by disuse. History is full of instances of such a 
failure of national energies after a brilliant promise of 
lengthened vitality ; and some modern States present 
instances scarcely less unequivocal, though, as the drama 
is not yet closed, it may be premature to distinguish 
between the symptoms of disease and those of old age. 

The historical cases of senile failure of States are 
especially valuable as explaining some of the causes of 
this decadence. 

It is well known that Kome, during the last two 
hundred years of the Republic, was suffering from 
three political evils which all co-operated to arrest her 
growth, and which, but for the corrective sequence of 
events which resulted in the Empire, must have precipi- 
tated her ruin, or rather antedated it by some hundreds 
of years. These evils were the prevalence of slave labour, 
with its attendant social, industrial, and economical 
paralysis ; the misgovernment of the remoter provinces 



132 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

constantly in course of being annexed ; and the inefficient 
governmental institutions for preserving the balance of 
powers in the State and for adequately representing 
the actual distribution of the political forces. 

These several cancers in the State conduced to the 
gradual substitution of an aristocratic plutocracy for 
all the organs of Government which had sufficed for 
the earlier Eepublican period before the acquisition of 
territory outside Italy, but Avhich were becoming more 
and more unsuitable to the strain put upon them. 
Nothing but bold and even audacious reform, such as 
the Gracchi conceived but were, by themselves, unable 
to carry into permanent operation, could have revived 
the expiring energies of the State. It was only through 
paroxysms of civic violence that a series of leaders with 
broad political views and the capacity of giving practical 
effect to them were ultimately brought to the top. 

Marius, Sulla, Julius Caesar, and Augustus repre- 
sented an order of men suited to the times, but wholly 
different from the heroes of the older Republic. With 
all their several shortcomings and vices, private and 
public, they probably all co-operated to galvanise into 
life a State that had, by military successes, acquired an 
Empire which, at that stage of the world, it was only 
just possible to administer with justice or safety. 

The conspicuous parallel to the later stages of degra- 
dation in, the Eoman Empire is the present state of 
the Ottoman Empire. This Empire, indeed, has behind 
it none of the peculiar and exhilarating antecedents of 
the early Roman Republic. But it had, — in common with 
the later Republic and the earlier Empire, — the faculty 
of conquest and the taste for indefinite territorial 
annexation. Unlike Rome, however, Turkey never had 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA OF 310DERN rOLITICS. 133 

institutions of which the memorial and typical repro- 
ductions might tlirow a beneficial shadow. The un- 
relieved picture of its past is that of aggression, 
massacre, fanaticism, and licentiousness. The only 
foundation of Empire was physical courage. The 
result is that wherever the Ottoman power could effec- 
tually extend itself, the provinces have been unfitted 
for self-government. The only art in which they are 
accomplished students is that of revolution. 

The prolongation of political vitality in the central 
Government was a dream of some sanguine English 
statesmen, of whom Lord Palmerston w^as the most 
conspicuous and the most influential, at the time of 
the Crimean War. This visionary hope is now dispelled. 
The rapid decadence of Turkey is found to be due to 
senility and not transient disease. The only relevant 
political questions affecting her are as to the future 
Government of the provinces in course of separation 
from her one by one, and, in the interval while the 
process of disintegration is yet uncompleted, as to the 
amount and quality of the pressure from without which 
can be brought to bear, in order to vindicate, in the 
provinces still submitted to her, the barest claims of 
humanity. The special cases of Egypt and of the 
Turkish provinces in North Africa have a political 
interest, not because they form, technically, part of the 
Ottoman dominions, but either as affecting the mutual 
relations of European States, or as disclosing some of 
the phenomena of nascent States, acquiring a true 
political character for the first time. 

By this process of selection of States politically 
important at the present time — either because they 



134 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

exhibit real and independent manifestations of genuine 
political activity or because they afford political in- 
struction of a complete kind, — the area of thought and 
observation is reduced to countries and populations of 
a comparatively limited extent. Of course in any such 
demarcation as is here attempted, where such subtle 
grounds of distinction are admitted as alleged imma- 
turity, torpidity, and final exhaustion, there must be 
something arbitrary and inconchisive in drawing a 
precise line. But, if once it is admitted that some such 
line exists, and that its direction can be ascertained by 
reference to established political principles, the dispute 
as to whether a given State, of doubtful pretensions, 
lies on one side or another of the line, is of very small 
moment. When the occasion is presented, by a current 
controversy or a pressing problem, for including that 
State within the area of relevantly important political 
communities, its claims are sure to be argued ab initio^ 
and no theoretical preconceptions as to its exclusion 
from consideration would be allowed to prevail. 

Nevertheless, it may be worth while to distribute 
the politically relevant States into those of primary 
importance, those of secondary importance, and those 
of only occasional or hypothetical importance. 

To the first of these classes belong, according to 
the above mentioned principles of selection and dis- 
tribution, all the Independent States of Europe, only 
excepting the very recently emancipated Provinces of 
Turkey, which are so far under European control and 
protection that their destinies are determined in a great 
measure by the mutual relations and policy of other * 
States over which they directly exercise a very insigni- 
ficant influence. But, as to this exception, the line 



THE GEOGRAPIIiaVL AKEA OF MODERN POLITICS. 135 

can only be drawn nncertainly, and while Greece is 
clearly on the political side of the line, Servia, Eou- 
mania, and the other provinces which have attained a 
practical release from, or modification of, their vassalage 
to the Ottoman Empire, are on the non-political side of 
the same line. 

The United States is a prominent member of the 
class of States of primary political importance, and 
Japan is effectually asserting her claims to a like posi- 
tion. It might be a matter of indeterminable con- 
troversy how far China, — overborne as her Government 
is by Russian, French, and English influences, and 
internally oppressed by the immobility and decentralisa- 
tion of her political system, — is becoming on a par 
with Japan as a matter of political concern. China is 
both old and young, progressive and stagnant. Pro- 
bably a few years will decide the true place of China in 
the political world. Its manifestations are too recent, 
too confused, and too equivocal, to enable it at present 
to rank side by side with the equably and freely de- 
veloped State of Japan, and still less with the States of 
Europe and the United States. 

To the class of States of secondary political im- 
portance belong all newly- formed but independent 
States ; all mature, but quasi-dependent States ; and all 
States, which, though (perhaps) in process of degrada- 
tion and dissolution, are not yet advanced far enough 
in the course of decline to cease to be objects of political 
regard. The first of these groups contains such of 
the recently emancipated provinces of the Ottoman 
Empire as are not included, according to the above 
mentioned tests, in the class of States of j^rimary 
importance ; and States recently emerged from bar- 



136 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

barism, such as certain islands in the Pacific Ocean, 
especially the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, and also 
some of the organised political communities in the 
interior of Africa. The second group, — that of mature 
but quasi-dependent States, — includes Egypt and the 
provinces of the Ottoman Empire on the Northern 
Coast of Africa ; the native States of India ; and such 
States as Affghanistan and Persia, which owe their 
significance mainly to the neighbourhood of more im- 
portant States. The third group, of effete States, not 
3^et quite exhausted, includes some of the political 
communities in South America with a Spanish or 
Portuguese origin, and the Ottoman Empire. 

To the class of States of occasional or hypothe- 
tical importance belong those political communities 
which may or may not be true ' States ' in the strict 
meaning of the term given by International law, but 
which, any way, from time to time exhibit such marked 
political manifestations of an interesting kind, on so 
large or so prominent a scale, that they cannot be left 
out of account in defining the area of significant politics 
as presented at any particular moment. The internal 
Government of British India, though on one side of it 
only a phase of English Politics, is, on another side of 
it, rife with political problems and experiments, with 
which England and the rest of the world generally have 
only a very indirect concern. The same is true of the 
political manifestations of the Australian Colonies, in 
respect of constitutional adjustments, the occupation 
of land, taxation, commercial tariffs, and immigration. 
The United States of America, again, disclose, in the 
internal and local Government of the component 
members of the Union, a quantity of political experi- 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA. OF MODERN POLITICS. 137 

ence wliich is none the less instructive and moi*ally 
impressive, as well as urgent^ because the ' States ' of 
the Union are, in one aspect of them, onlj subordinate 
portions of a comprehensive whole. 

On the same principle the constitutions accorded 
from time to time by the Western Powers to special 
provinces of the Ottoman Empire, such as Syria, 
Eastern Bulgaria, and Crete, have attracted to them- 
selves an amount of political attention wholly out of 
proportion to the relations of the countries themselves 
to the decrepit central Government on which they are 
technically dependent. In the same way it has happened 
that the Government of Dutch colonial settlements, 
whether in Java or in the Indian Ocean or in South 
Africa, has presented distinct political problems of a 
general interest which has fer exceeded the concern 
that would have been bestowed upon them in their 
relations to the kingdom of Holland. 

The object of these observations is to show that, 
while it is necessary to classify the exi>sting political 
communities of the world, in order to ascertain their 
relative political significance at any given moment, yet 
that the line between States which are more and those 
which are less important can only be drawn with hesi- 
tation and difficulty, and never in such a way as to 
exclude the possibility of controversy at all points. 
Furthermore, the line is constantly shifting, and must 
be incessantly retraced afresh. Sometimes the line 
is violently displaced ; and the issue of a battle, the 
sequel of a pestilence or famine, or even a mistake in 
diplomacy, may have the effect of reducing to protracted 
political insignificance a State lately the ' obsei-ved of 
all observers/ 



138 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL LIFE AND 
ACTION. 

It is not the mere suggestion of historical considera- 
tions which enforces the notion that there is in every 
political comniunity a group of elements or factors 
which are presujDposed in the very existence of Govern- 
ment, and on the due manipulation of which successful 
Government depends. 

A true State only comes into being when these 
primordial components have attained a certain stage of 
development ; and its vitality, at all stages of its growth, 
is threatened whenever these components have their 
integrity impaired, or are badly adjusted, or when they 
spontaneously decay. That there are such indispensable 
elements in the compositions of every State is admitted 
in every political controversy that does not deal with a 
purely ideal world, or Utopia, where the ingredients 
and conditions can bo created as well as handled at the 
controversialists' will. But an attempt to enumerate 
such elements for all conditions of society in all time 
w^ould give a delusiye appearance of absoluteness to a 
Science which must always continue relative to the 
changing conditions of humanity and of social develop- 
ment. 

In Aristotle's time, and even in the beginning of 



PPvIMAIlY liT.EMENTS OF rOLITICAL LIFE AND ACTION. 1 39 

this century in America, slavery was treated, consciously 
or unconsciously, as a necessary and invariable con- 
comitant sentiment of all political society, or of political 
society in certain parts of the world. The mere lapse 
of time, changes in ethical sentiment, and the shock 
of events, have rendered this mode of thought at the 
present day, even in America, an anachronism. Slavery 
is universally denounced as, at the best, an accidental 
and transitory institution which, instead of being an 
essential constituent of human society, is, in all its 
forms, its most formidable foe. 

Another fact, which up to late into this century has 
worn the appearance of an immutable institution, is the 
political subordination of women to men. Though 
ancient polities differed much from one another in 
the freedom allowed to women, and such charac- 
teristic societies as those of Athens, Sparta, and Eome, 
— let alone the earlier ones of Egypt and Palestine, — 
distributed the functions of men and women each 
according to its own customary prepossessions, yet they 
one and all, it would seem (leaving, for the moment, 
the still unsettled problem of Egyptian civilisation, at 
certain stages, out of account), concurred in giving an 
enormous political, legal, and social preponderance to 
men over women. Mr. John Stuart Mill, following 
the rational divination of Bentham, was the first, in 
his ' Subjection of Women^' to explain this universal 
preference, — not to say injustice, — by reference to the 
historical advantage enjoyed by men through their pos- 
session of that special sort of physical strength which, 
in the earlier stages of society, is most conspicuously in 
demand. Travellers among incipient communities have 
one and all substantiated this view, and have shown 



140 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

that, altliougli there are not wanting examples of com- 
munities in which women have a social preponderance 
over men, yet in these cases it is the women and not 
the men who, from superior muscular strength, courage, 
agility, endurance, or numbers, bear the main brunt of 
the conflict with nature and with competing races. 

Mr. Mill's argument derives illustration and force 
from the notorious fact that the less militant, feudal, 
and physically contentious society becomes, the larger 
is the space found for women's activity, and the more it 
encroaches on the occupations traditionally reserved to 
men. It also is admitted with less and less reluctance, 
that even in estimating and comparing degrees of 
physical strength, nervous energy; and elasticity or 
adaptability, capacity for endurance, susceptibility to 
the claims of unforeseen emergencies, are not only of 
more importance in an advanced community than the 
mere muscular strength which resists mechanical ob- 
stacles, but that these qualities are found in average 
women more abundantly than in average men. This 
is found to be the case in spite of all the disiDaragement 
which women have suffered owing to the dominating 
tradition in favour of the superiority of the claims, of 
men. It can only be seen by gradually equalising, on a 
large scale, the political condition and the general 
occupations of men and women, to what diverse so- 
cial functions they are respectively most adapted by 
nature. 

However this question may be ultimately decided, 
it is now only relevant to notice that it is recognised, 
as it never was recognised up to the beginning of this 
century, as an open one. Not, indeed, that premature 
efforts have not already been made to close it, by various 



PRIMAKY l^EMENTS OF POLITICAL LIFE AND ACTION. 141 

kinds of solutions more or less different from the old and 
almost obsolete one. M. Comte's system lias elevated 
women to a higher intellectual position in a social consti- 
tution than has that of any other thinker, and if it with- 
draws them from the task of practical administration, 
it depresses lower than other political constructions 
the position of all those conversant only with practical 
arts, — including the art of Government. M. Comte, 
however, emphasises far more than any other reformer 
in this direction the final opposition in faculty of men 
and women. Mr. Mill hardly admits any permanent or 
essential opposition at all. 

It is not necessary to give further illustrations of 
the truth that while there are undoubtedly, in any given 
State, at any given time, certain facts and institutions 
which must be looked upon as primar}^ and indispen- 
sable, and as forming the material on which the states- 
man is called to work, yet there are very few facts, 
indeed, even of those bound up with the constitution 
of man himself, which must be treated as unalterable 
and irreversible. 

For the purpose, however, of Political science as 
capable of being studied at the present day and as 
coextensive in its application, in different degrees, to 
the geographical area already limited, it is possible to 
assign certain main facts, conditions, or relationships, 
which may be treated as permanent and as calling for 
recognition by the statesman. 

Without, perhaps, being exhaustive, the following 
list certainly includes a large number of the facts, con- 
ditions, and relationships, which, either independently 
of each other, or in their combination, are at the very 
root of political society. 



142 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Peesons. 
Age. 
Sex. 

Physical conditions and liabilities. 
Mental and emotional conditions (including reli- 
gious proclivities). 
Heredity. 
Capacity for association. 

Things. 
Land. 
Movables. 
Sea^ and Water generally. 

Relationships. 
Domestic. 
Social. 
Economical. 
National. 

Though, for strictly juridical, or even for some philo- 
sophical, purposes each of these political elements must 
be investigated separately, there would be a falsity in 
applying the same method of research when the object 
is purely political. There is hardly a single one of 
these elements which the politician can isolate, even 
for a moment, from the rest and can contemplate alone, 
and it is in a due combination of them, and in a sort 
of perspective adjustment, that he exhibits his skill and 
scientific attainments to most advantage. 

The original, as well as the permanent, function of 
Government is the exercise of such a control over the 
relations of persons to one another in a State as may 
bring those relations into accord with the requirements 
of pure reason, may protect majorities and minorities 



PEJMARY ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL LIFE AND ACTION. 143 

from aggressive interruptions on the part of each other, 
and may, by the help of the best economic organisation, 
facilitate the mere mechanism of society in the pre- 
sumed interest of all its members. 

Of course, it is scarcely necessary to recur to history 
and to current fticts in order to demonstrate that 
Governments have seldom confined themselves, even in 
outward profession, to these limited functions, and that 
even where they do so in outward show, the inherent 
vagueness of any attempted detailed description of 
these functions renders all sorts of extravagant pre- 
tensions admissible and even plausible. But, it being 
assumed that the functions of Government are, for 
scientific purposes, of the broad nature above described, 
it appears at once that it is with the relationships of 
persons to each that Government is alone concerned. 
These relationships are of various kinds ; and are either 
absolute, in so far as they terminate in the persons 
themselves who are the subjects of them, or ^lvq relative, 
in so far as they are concerned with objects, that is, 
with material things, immovable and movable, outside 
the persons themselves who are the subjects of the 
relationship. 

A leading fact to be noticed is that the relationships 
controlled and formulated or even stimulated by Govern- 
ment must be, in themselves, natural, — that is, in accord- 
ance with the physical, moral, and mental constitution 
of man as a social being. This constitution is deter- 
mined (as Aristotle put it) not by what man is, at any 
given time or in any given place, but by what he is 
capable of becoming, and that in the most favourable cir- 
cumstances ; that is what, in the absence of obstacles, 
he tends to become. It is difficult to speak of a ^natural' 



144 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

constitution or ^ natural ' order without committing a 
petitio principii. It is so easy in speech to confuse 
what is customary and perhaps in the highest degree 
artificial, or what is the result of mere neglect and 
immaturity, with what is ^ natural^ and necessary, that 
the utmost precautions can hardly guard any state- 
ment on the subject sufficiently to avoid fallacious 
error. 

Nevertheless, the researches of physical and psycho- 
logical science seem to prove that man's physical con- 
stitution is governed by definite and unalterable laws, 
although the discovery of those laws is difficult in the 
extreme, and the laws themselves are found to differ 
within certain nan'ow limits in different times and 
countries. What is true of man's purely physical con- 
stitution seems to be proved more and more convincingly 
to be true of man's moral constitution as a member of 
society. The problem, indeed, of ascertaining the laws 
which govern this normal condition becomes increasingly 
difficult with every step upward in the scale of social 
complexity and ethical obscurity. But the arduousness 
of finding out and stating a law must be clearly dis- 
tinguished from any doubt attaching to the fact that 
there is or is not such a law. 

It is of practical quite as much as of speculative im- 
portance to recognise that human relationships, such as 
daily experience on every side and the whole current of 
past history shows them to be, are the indej)endent frame- 
work on which the politician works, and not due to his 
own creative activity. In all affairs, human as well as 
mechanical, it is easiest to work in the direction of least 
resistance. The resistance is least where the common 
appetites, the sentiments, the desires, the passions, of 



PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL LIFE AND ACTION. 145 

mankind rather co-operate tlian oppose. Government, 
indeed, is found, liistorically, to grow out of some 
preponderant impulse in favour of supporting existing 
facts and institutions. But these very facts and insti- 
tutions themselves are only the aggregate expression of 
instincts, habits, propensities, operating through long 
periods of time and by means of the intensifying force 
of concert and of associations of all kinds hardened into 
grooves. At the time that true Government of a 
permanent kind has come into being, society is becoming 
self-reflective. Not indeed that Government itself is a 
creation of deliberate reason, and still less that its 
reason is always in excess of the reason to be found 
elsewhere in the society. All that can be said is that 
it is from the very first the expression of the best and 
most orderly dispositions to be found in the average 
mass of the commniiity. If it were not so, it could 
only persevere for a time by virtue of physical force 
exercised either by a foreign power or by the few over 
the many. It could not live and still less grow and 
develope. 

The case is, however, otherwise. Though a primitive 
Government is weak in the extreme, yet it subsists and 
progresses only because, on the whole, it is the embodi- 
ment of the new capacity and df^sires of the bulk of the 
people for national organisation. Hence, not only is it 
inexpedient for a Government to trifle with the fixed 
and spontaneous practices and dispositions of the 
people, but it is impossible for it to do so for long 
together without committing an act of suicide. In 
very early society, there is only the choice, but there is 
the choice, between Government and a return to bar- 
barism. In a later stage, as in that of early Greece, 



146 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS 

political inventiveness has multiplied the number of 
alternatives. Thus Constitutions take their rise, and a 
limited number of possible forms of Government, — 
that is, the rule of one, of a few, of many, — are ad- 
mitted as alternative wnjs of escape from a recurrence 
to anarchy. 

It is the great gain of the modern world that the 
number of constitutional forms seems almost inex- 
haustible, the possible modes of combination of Cham- 
bers and schemes for representation being as large 
as human ingenuity itself. Therefore the question 
now never is nor can be whether the alternative of 
anarchy is to be selected, on any failure of Government 
to do the work expected of it, but only what modifica- 
tion in the existing form of Government is most 
urgently called for. 

Not, indeed, that changes in the form of Govern- 
ment are not still often enough revolutionary and 
attended by a social catastrophe. But if the State has 
any vitality anywhere in it, such phenomena are only 
transient. An instant competition takes place between 
the advocates or personal representatives of the xarious 
forms of Government between which, at the place and 
time, a choice is seen to lie, and very little time is lost 
before, at all events, an experimental Government is 
in full exercise of supreme power. 

It will thus be noted that from first to last, in spite 
of all divergencies from its true end and aim, and of 
all personal errors and crimes, every Government 
which has lasted in any State has done so in virtue of 
its aptly recognising and co-operating with the spon- 
taneous dispositions of the great mass of the people. 
It becomes, then, of the utmost importance for a legis- 



TENUEE OF LAND. U7 

lator who, iu conformity with the constitution of his 
State, is bent on adapting to circumstances and needs 
the general rules which bind the people to inform 
himself what are the institutions and tendencies which, 
at the moment, must be treated as essentially immu- 
table. These institutions and tendencies may admit 
of indefinite adjustment and improvement, and the 
necessity for this may, by proper measures for diffusing 
information, be made intelligible and even popular. 
But to modify is not to abrogate, and any untimely 
attempt to do the latter, will absorb, in a hopeless 
effort, all the energj^ needed for the former. 

A prominent instance of the function of Govern- 
ment in controlling and developing, without ignoring, 
an institution is suj^plied by the history, in all coun- 
tries, of the Tenure of Land. It is only when a race 
or aero:reo:ation of tribes becomes settled on a definite 
territory that all the conditions can be satisfied on 
which national life, in the true sense, depends. No 
doubt there have been vast assemblages of races, such 
as the Teutonic races, that in the fourth and fifth 
centuries overran the territories of the Roman Empire, 
Avhich have possessed a considerable amount of true 
national or^ranisation. But the want of fixitv in their 
occupation of the soil was a defect in their political 
structure which could not be made up by the presence 
of other elements, such as monarchy, public order, 
and even national self-consciousness and cohesiveness. 
The want of fixity interfered with the steady develop- 
ment of family life, and of economical relationships 
and enterprise, and with the treasuring up from one 
age to another of the hereditary associations supplied 



148 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

by place, scenery, and neiglibourhood, on which so 
many of the ingredients of national existence rely 
for their proper nutriment. The growth of towns was 
also rendered impossible ; and this might be taken as, 
in itself, a fatal obstacle to national life and expansive- 
ness. 

Assuming then, that the occupation of a definite 
territory is an inseparable factor in true political 
existence, the question is presented, at the earliest 
moment of national existence, — and has to be answered 
again and again at successive crises in the later history 
of the State, — upon what principles the distribution of 
the soil is to take place. 

The question of the distribution of land is, in fact, 
only a part of the larger question relating to the general 
distribution and use of all material things whatsoever. 
Long before the true State is formed, and when first 
the instincts of order and property are beginning to 
assert themselves, rough rules and customs are evolved 
for the use, acquisition, transfer, and even inheritance 
or forfeiture, of such physical objects as are appreciated 
at an early stage of society, but are not supplied in j^ro- 
portion to an indefinite demand. But the regulations 
existing for such purposes, interesting as they are as 
an exhibition of primitive social usage and as illus- 
trating the primordial stages of law, have little political 
significance. 

It is only when society becomes in a measure 
settled, and when agriculture and the growth of towns 
become characteristic phases of a fully formed, though 
yet elementary, national life, that the rules for the 
appropriation of physical objects, — and most of all of 
the national soil, — become of ever increasing moment 



TENUEE OF LAND. 149 

as purely political factors. So soon as merely preda- 
tory and pastoral habits are relinquished, the com- 
petition for land begins. It is instantly perceived that 
even if, in one sense, there is enough land for the real 
wants of each and all, yet that one piece of land differs 
from another in its propinquity to the centre of the 
national life, in its capacity for being cultivated and 
improved, and in its possession of facilities for the con- 
veyance of its produce to markets. Its quality, and, at 
a little later st>age, its scenic attractions, and hereditary 
or other like sentimental associations, introduce new 
grounds of distinction between one portion of land and 
another. 

Various social and legal incidents of a familiar sort 
follow in the wake of these facts. Of these there have 
been conspicuous illustrations in the emphatic enforce- 
ment of class and plutocratic distinctions, brought 
about through the medium of the enormous slave- 
worked farms (latifundia), which so heavily weighted 
the later Eoman Republic ; the military ascendency and 
minutely regulated gradation of classes which charac- 
terised the Feudal system throughout Western Europe ; 
and the phenomenon of rent which, with, the attendant 
institution of the relationship of landlord and tenant, 
has had so profound an influence on the distribution of 
classes in many countries of Europe, and most of all in 
Great Britain and Ireland. 

The occupation of land has, up to the present cen- 
tury, proceeded very much by hazard, and has been 
determined far more by specious considerations of imme- 
diate justice, and of the commanding claims of public 
order from day to day, than by any deliberately con- 
ceived policy. There have, however, during the last 



150 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

two centuries, been causes at work which have gradu- 
ally changed the land question from one of law and 
administration into one of a purely political order. 

Such causes are the vast emigration movement 
wdiich, through the colonisation of the American Con- 
tinent and Australasia, has been j)roceeding at a 
constantly accelerated rate of activity. The effect of 
this occupation of temporarily unlimited territory on 
a vast scale has set free the statesmen of the coun- 
tries primarily concerned to treat the question of land- 
appropriation from a wholly new point of view. No 
doubt the actual tenure of land in the United States of 
America, in Canada, and in the Australasian Colonies, 
has been determined very much by the accidental 
circumstances in which the original settlement took 
place. Sometimes, — as in the case of South Australia, 
— a deliberate attempt was made from the first to 
distribute the soil in such a way as to. prevent too 
rapid a dispersion of the holders of it, and to favour 
rather than to impede the development of towns. In 
other cases, as with some of the early American 
Colonies, the purpose of a grant of land to a chartered 
body of Colonists was the cultivation of some special 
product for the home market. In some of these Colonies 
the land was acquired by pacific arrangement with the 
aboriginal inhabitants, for the purpose of supplying 
the wants of a community already possessing a religious 
and quasi-political organisation. 

What distinguishes all these cases of the occupa- 
tion on an extended scale of the soil of new countries, 
is that the problem is felt from the first to be a large 
political one, and not a mere narrow legal one. No doubt 
in most of the actual cases, all sorts of mistakes. 



TENUEE OF LAND IN INDIA. 151 

selfishness, false policy, and reckless neglect of priceless 
opportunities, have played their part. But still the rela- 
tionships of citizens to each other, in respect of land, 
were not determined by the accidental course of a slowly 
developing civilisation, but by views entertained by 
numbers of persons consorting with each other, having 
consciously in view ulterior as well as present interests, 
and having a practically unrestricted territorj^ to deal 
with. The question thus assumed political propor- 
tions. 

To a similar, though not identical, class of causes 
of the recent development of the political aspects of 
land tenure belongs the process of acquisition by England 
of British India. 

The result of the British acquisitions in India has 
been (speaking generally) the displacement of the 
older land-tenure system, as based on an organisation 
of Village Communities, and the substitution, partly 
of the landlord and tenant system existing in England, 
partly of systems of peasant proprietorships, guaranteed 
by settlement for a long but definite period, partly of 
new and peculiar tenures, proved to be specially advan- 
tageous to the cultivator of the land, and introduced 
for the first time in compliance with the Reports of 
Commissions. 

The policy of all these land systems has been 
abundantly criticised ; and Sir H. S. Maine, especially 
in his ' Village Communities,' after pointing out the 
modes in which the British Government has anticipated 
the natural decay of antiquated institutions, expresses 
alarm at the social disintegration likely to be brought 
about by the premature substitution of individual 
for corporate ownership. Other objections have been 



152 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

founded on the alleged interference Tvith the rights of 
private contract, with the rights engendered by pre- 
vious Government settlements, and with such secondary 
rights of money lenders and mortgagees as, through the 
long operation of pauperising systems of tenure, had 
grown up in profusion. Nevertheless the Government 
has persisted in its course ; and land legislation in 
India is now, as heretofore, conducted solely in defer- 
ence to broad political, and scarcely at all in deference 
to narrow legal, considerations. 

A similar state of things is just being witnessed in 
Ireland, though the immediate causes which have 
wakened up the British Government to a political view 
of the whole situation are different from Avhat they 
were in India. Both in India and in Ireland the proxi- 
mate pauperisation of the bulk of a population mainly 
agricultural supplied the needful impetus to a political 
cliange of attitude. In Ireland, however, a long series 
of acts of misgovernment had generated disaffection of 
a serious kind, while the neighbourhood of England 
rendered a change in the Irish land-tenure system an 
evil omen to proprietors of land on the other side of a 
narrow channel. In India, on the other hand, the 
obstacles to reform due to prejudice, fixity of ideas, 
race antipathies, and vested interests, though by no 
means absent, yet were too scattered and intangible to 
compete with the urgent necessity for developing the 
country and for putting a stop to the recurrent famines. 
In both countries one and the same result has been 
brought about, — that of treating the tenure of land 
from a political, and no longer only from a purely legal 
and administrative, standpoint. 

Events on the Continent of Europe, from the begin- 



LA2sD LAWS IN FEANCE, GERMANY, AND RUSSIA. 153 

ning of this century, have tended in the same direction. 
In Germany the system of land tenure, credited with 
the name of Stein (though the proportions of his 
reform have been exaggerated), was introduced as a 
pob'tical cure for widespread evils, the relics of expiring 
feudalism and of the social devastation caused first by 
the Thirty Years' War and then by the military aggres- 
siveness of Prussia. In France, the sudden break-up 
of feudal and aristocratic institutions which had long 
been an anachronism threw the great mass of the soil 
of the country into the market, and made it share in 
the purely political reformation by which, at the time 
of the Revolution and since, all the institutions of the 
country have been recast. In Russia, within still more 
recent times, by the abolition of villenage a most far- 
reaching reconstruction of land tenure has been brought 
about, the effects of which on the purely political des- 
tinies of the country, while they must be extensive, 
cannot yet be evaluated. 

It is, then, admitted on all hands, and has been 
authenticated in one country after another in the most 
distinct language, that the relations of citizens to one 
another in respect of land is one of the most prominent 
departments of Political Science. When once so much 
is confessed, it becomes necessary to examine how 
different modes of distributing the soil of a country 
and of providing for its acquisition, use, and transfer, 
bear upon the political well-being of a country. A 
number of problems are thus originated which can 
only be solved in precise detail for each country, age, 
and class of circumstances to which it is intended to 
apply them. Certain leading principles are, however, 
alread}' ascertained, on a due apprehension of which 



154 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

must dej^end any satisfactory solution of the problems 
which may occur. 

The principle of first importance is that the soil of 
a country belongs to the whole population, present and 
to come, and not to any limited part of it. Stated in 
this way, the proposition is either a truism or is likely 
to be denounced as flagrantly or absurdly untrue. 
And, indeed, it is one of those propositions both the 
direct affirmative and the direct negative of which are 
equally untrue, and which can best be stated in an 
abbreviated form, solely in order to call attention to 
the appendant qualifications. The best explanation of 
the proposition is an historical one. 

In the earlier stages of society the quantity of land 
is, except in very rare circumstances, far out of pro- 
portion to the simple wants of the population of which 
the State is composed. By one method and another, 
— of an accidental kind so far as political intention goes, 
— the whole soil is gradually appropriated. Through 
the continuous operation of customary usages, origina- 
ting in convenience or in common sentiments, of judicial 
decisions made in compliance with current notions of 
abstract justice, and of occasional legislation taking 
place from time to time in order to supply the short- 
comings of Courts of Justice, rules are laid down for 
the acquisition, use, and transfer, of the national soil. 
But while this goes on, the population or its wants, 
and generally both together, increase indefinitely, while 
the land remains the same in quantity, and its capacity 
of use only increases at a wholly disproportionate rate. 

If this process were to go on without limit, or 
without being arbitrarily arrested, the portion of the 
population which, through the competition for wealth, 



ORIGIN OF LAND LAWS. 155 

Lad been worsted in the social struggle, would be 
excluded from tlie territory altogether. In countries 
where excessive emigration is going on, this process is 
already at work. It is however almost always impeded 
at a much earlier stage. Gross apparent inequality of 
fortune, widespread pauperism, unsatisfied ' hunger for 
land,^ and competition for a share in agricultural 
profits, awaken the attention of the statesman to the 
fact that land is a political instrument, which cannot 
be treated like other physical things, — as capable of 
being indefinitely created or reproduced through birth, 
growth, or manufacture. 

On further consideration, it is found that it is only 
by an historical accident or series of accidents that the 
national soil has been exclusively appropriated by a com- 
paratively minute fraction of the population ; and that 
it would be irrational and unjust to jeopardise the whole 
future fortunes of the general community by conform- 
ing, in deference to merely sentimental considerations 
or to self-interested appeals from private persons, to a 
state of things which, when analysed, is found to be 
ethically indefensible. At the same time, the require- 
ments of internal locomotion, the demand for public 
works and structures, the increasingly recognised in- 
terests of public health, recreation, education, and even 
refinement, combine to press upon Government the 
necessity of putting in, on behalf of the people as an 
integral whole, novel and preponderating claims to a 
share in the land already absorbed. 

Still farther reflection and observation teach that 
the State has other ulterior interests, in respect of the 
land, which far outvie the historical claims of the 
actual proprietors. Some modes of tenure are found 



156 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

more conducive than others to good agriculture, to the 
creation of an interest in public affairs, to the formation 
of stability and continuity in common political thought, 
and to the simplification of Local Government. It must 
be the object of a judicious statesman to seize every 
opportunity which may offer, to change the V70rse for 
the better system of tenure, and the more broadly 
statesmanlike habits of mind are diffused, the more 
such changes are likely to be facilitated. 

The way this characteristic modern view of the 
conflicting interests of the whole community, and of 
private proprietors, in respect of land formulates itself 
is by asserting that the land is, or ought to be, national 
property and not susceptible of being finally absorbed 
by private persons and their hereditary representatives 
from one generation to another. To maintain this 
doctrine, and still more to enforce it by practical legis- 
lation, naturally excites the strongest antipathies in a 
variety of quarters, on the ground of its being redolent 
of ' confiscation,' and of its implying an alleged 
national breach of faith with existing proprietors. 

The Feudal system, which was at the root of the 
land tenure in the most important countries of Wes- 
tern Europe, reserved the dominant claims of the Feudal 
monarch, who personified the State as paramount over 
all derived estates, and ' allodial ' property became in 
the highest degree exceptional. The progress of that 
system, however, was first to transmute service into the 
payment of rent, so far as the subordinate and derived 
estates went; and, at the same time, through aris- 
tocratic encroachments on the Crown, — or rather, 
through a fresh division of functions between the 
Crown on the one hand and its hi^h Councillors aud 



PROGRESS OF LAST) LEGISLATION. 157 

ofRcers on the other, — to reduce the significance, or 
abolish the memorj, of services due to the Crown. 

It thus came about that the Uirger landed pro- 
prietors stepped into the place of the Crown, so far 
as its paramount ownership of the national land went, 
while ;*^hey have not inherited from the Crown, to- 
gether With their estates, the corresponding political 
obligations. Hence, in the countries where the Feudal 
system has taken the deepest root and for the longest 
time, — such as England and France, — the laws as 
made by the nobility, or as being the surviving relics 
of the system itself, especially favoured the larger pro- 
prietors, and conduced to the accumulation of estates 
in a very limited number of hands. At the same time 
the moral claims of the cultivator, and of the actual 
resident on the soil, had a far worse chance of being 
effectually asserted or borne in mind than might have 
been the case had the tenure of land been left to follow 
the more spontaneous development which took place 
in territories which were longer under the shadow of 
customary institutions protected by the waning force 
of the Eoman Empire, — such as Italy, Switzerland, and 
the South of France. 

Of course, when the charge of ^confiscation^ is 

made against any contemplated re-assertion of national 

against private claims, it must be remembered that 

such a charge would only be justified if the perpetual 

policy of a State in favour of deferring to the claims of 

abstract Justice were really infringed. These claims, 

undoubtedly, demand that reasonable expectations, 

called into being by the State itself, should be satisfied 

to the utmost extent possible, and, at least, never left 

out of serious account. 
8 



158 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

But when a question of abstract Justice presents 
itself, a solution cannot be obtained by taking account 
of the claims on one side and no account at all of 
those on the other. If. through a series of political 
accidents during a long period of time, any important 
class of the community professes to have enjoyed 
privileges or exclusive advantages, from which other 
equally important classes have thereby been shut out, 
the absolute claims of Justice itself demand that a 
re-adjustment be effected with as little delay as pos- 
sible, though, also, with the least possible economical 
or moral loss to either of the competing classes of 
claimants. In respect of new land-legislation, pecu- 
niary compensation can usually go some length in 
avoiding needless economical loss ; though it may be 
that the loss to certain sentiments of ownership may 
be irreparable. 

If it seems harsh that the burden of sudden reforms 
should all fall on a single generation, it is also harsh, 
in another way, that a single generation of taxpayers 
should have to pay the price of compensation to the 
vested interests violated. This inequality of pressure 
in national burdens between one genera,tion and another 
is a necessary, though often vexatious, consequence, of 
the continuity of State life, and it will always be the 
aim of the wise and just statesman, by loans and 
payment of loans and other financial devices, to dis- 
tribute, as equally as may be, the burdens of the State 
between one generation and others. 

Besides the characteristics of the individual man 
and woman, the fact of which is assumed in the 
organisation of the State, there are relationships into 



MAERIAGE. 159 

which persons of both sexes and all ages equally enter, 
which, through their internal coherence and external 
links with each other form the material out of which 
the State is moulded and consolidated. The groups 
so constituted are Families having their foundation in 
Marriage. 

The history of Marriage, as a political factor, is the 
history of the gradual training of mankind out of a 
condition in which a purely animal propensity pre- 
dominates over a dormant social and moral instinct, 
into a condition in which that propensity is completely 
subordinated to complex human sentiments capable of 
attaining the richest kinds of development. It is not 
true that, even in the most primitive savagery, marriage 
is wholly non-existent. History and the reports of 
travellers lend no support to such a view, which is, 
otherwise, opposed to the known constitution of man 
as a gregarious being. But the mere witness for 
marriage as something more than promiscuous cohabi- 
tation is compatible, it would seem, with any amount of 
degradation attending its early manifestations ; with any 
number of varieties in the forms of conjugal combina- 
tions of men and women ; with rites, ceremonies, and 
usages of the most grotesque and often of the most appa- 
rently irrational kind, and with, every kind of confusion 
and intermixture in the families which spring from 
marriage relationships. The progress of society, and of 
the State which is based on this progress and on the in- 
stitutions which it implicv^, is marked by nothing more 
distinct than the gradual evolution of a strict form 
of monosramic marriage out of all its antecedent and 
anticipatory manifestations. 

It is still denied in some quarters, not wholly un- 



160 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS 

deserving of attention, that monogamic marriage is to 
be always and everywhere the final form which the mar- 
riage relationship will assume in the perfectly developed 
State. It would be unscientific, as has already been 
repeatedly indicated, to lay down any absolute proposi- 
tions about states of society indefinitely remote and on 
which past experience of any sort could only throw an 
uncertain light. But, inasmuch as the art of Govern- 
ment calls for prevision before all else, and therefore 
must rest upon Scientific experience and observation 
conducted within appropriate limits, it is necessary, as 
it is possible, to draw conclusions of some sort from the 
past as to a future not indefinitely remote. 

The result of the teaching of the past is to show 
that though polygamic marriage is, in certain undeve- 
loped stages of society, compatible with the existence of 
a true State, yet that it is not compatible with the exist- 
ence of an advanced State. There are only two notice- 
able instances in which it might be claimed that poly- 
gamous institutions are compatible with a high degree 
of political progress. One is that of Judaism, which 
the habitual study of the Bible has rendered the most 
familiar and cherished of all historical precedents. The 
other is that of Mohammedanism. 

If the late Dr. Deutsch's theory be correct, — that 
Mohammedanism is only Judaism adapted to the con- 
ditions of Arabian life, — these two instances really 
amount only to one. But, on a closer scrutiny, the 
value of these instances of apparently successful poly- 
gamy is largely reduced. Neither Judaism at its best, 
nor Mohammedanism in its richest political and military 
manifestations, has exhibited any but the most imma- 
ture forms of true political life and organisation. The 



MARKIAGE IN THE HEBEEW STATE. IGl 

monotheistic beliefs, the priestly institutions, and the 
military necessities of Judaism, placed as it was, geo- 
graphically, between Egypt, Syria, and Assyria, com- 
bined to impart to it, at its highest moments under 
the early kings, political qualifications of a high but 
precocious kind. 

The weakness of the constitutional basis, however, 
on which the political order rested is manifest from 
the extraordinary influence exerted on the national 
fortunes by the personal character of the king, and from 
the mode in which, in spite of the political sagacity and 
importunities of a memorable line of statesmanlike pro- 
phets or prophetical statesmen, the policy of the State 
vacillated with every oscillation in the diplomacy of 
surrounding States. It succumbed to all its rivals and 
neighbours in succession, instead of holding, — as a small 
State so situated well could, and at rare times did, — 
the balance between them, and so securing the amount 
of regulated independence which the Egyptians, in the 
lowest depths of tlieir fortunes, under the same Assyrian 
oppression which bore so heavily on the kingdoms of 
Israel and Judah, succeeded in vindicating. 

The order of the Jewish State was built up on a 
traditional national instinct, on common ceremonial 
usages, on a religious unity, on far-sighted hierarchical 
arrangements, on tribal sympathies or antipathies, — 
but not on family life. Of course marriage of some 
sort and the integrity of the family were recognised 
abstractly in their institutions, and were enforced by 
teachers and prophets in the clearest and loudest tones. 
Otherwise the State could never have lived as it did, 
nor have so lived that, being dead, it yet speaketh. 
But the very prominence of the teaching and reproofs, 



162 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

and the notorious examples of the eminent persons 
whose biography has been preserved, point to the low- 
ness of the common standard of conjugal fideUty and 
the absence of monogamy as a theory or a practice. 
The want of this unit of family life could not but tell 
with weakening and isolating effect on every part of 
the political organisation, till^ at the summit, it touched 
external politics, and hastened the time long foreseen 
when the nation went forth one way to meet its enemies 
and fled seven ways before them. 

The history of Mohammedanism, when adduced as 
a favourable instance of the working of polygamic 
institutions from a political point of view, affords, if 
possible, a still more decisive proof on the other side. 
It may, first, be noticed by the way that polygamy was 
no original or essenti ii institution of Mohammedanism, 
and that Mohammed was enlightened and keen-sighted 
enough to perceive that for the purpose of creating an 
organised nation out of the wild and undisciplined 
Arabs who supplied the material for him to work upon, 
the first thing to do was to regulate family life, and to 
restrict the prevalent looseness of relationship which 
prevailed between men and women. This he achieved 
by binding his followers to content themselves with a 
definite number of wives, (that is four,) though he 
subsequently allowed himself and his successors in 
his office an unlimited number. Considering: that 
Mohammed seems to have been perfectly faithful for 
years together to his first Avife Hedijah, and only after 
her death to have allowed himself more than one wife, 
and that his whole poKcy became simultaneously more 
warlike and less religious, in an ethical sense, there 



MOHAMMEDAN AND MORMON MARRIAGE. 163 

can be little doubt that he underwent a personal degra- 
dation of sentiment in this matter. 

The results were impressed on the history of the 
Mohammedan movement. The principle of importing 
regulation of some sort into marriage and family life 
has, in spite of the libertinism of thought and aspira- 
tion which so much of the system inspires, admitted of 
some few of the nations penetrated by Mohammedanism 
attaining a very considerable amount of political pro- 
sperity. But the allowance of more wives than one, the 
facilities for divorce, the recognition of concubinage 
and of slavery have prevented any Mohammedan nation 
passing on to the higher forms of political life. All 
these higher forms presuppose first, the equality, before 
the law and in the State, of all its members, — men and 
women alike ; and, secondly, their settled distribution 
into the natural but strictly organised family groups, 
in and through which alone social and political life 
can be trained, concentrated, animated, and rendered 
subservient to other broader forms of association. The 
combination of these two conditions, — the equality of 
men and women and the distribution of all members of 
the State into distinct families, — can only be achieved 
by monogamic marriage. 

It is, perhaps, scarcely worth while to notice the 
eccentric reversion to polygamic marriage which has 
been attempted m the Mormon Society settled in the 
territory of Utah in the United States of America. It 
is not likely that the experience of the so-called 
' Saints ' of Salt Lake City and the adjacent districts 
will be cited as favourable to the general re-introduction 
of polygamic institutions. 



164 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

The subject of Mormonism^ as a political scheme, is 
a complex one, since it combines the elements of 
socialism, colonisation, religious superstition, and only 
as an accidental, and historically later, element, poly- 
gamy. It is suJfBcient to notice that the fortunes of 
the society have practically been more weighted by 
that abnegation of true family life which polygamy has 
involved than by any other of its peculiarities. The 
abnormally numerous progeny claiming one man as 
their father throws the burden of supporting the dif- 
ferent groups on the mothers of each, and encourages 
the common father in indolence and neglect of all 
parental duties ; while the natural rivalries of the 
different wives and the inane frivolity resulting, — as in 
Eastern harems, — from habits of life absorbingly pre- 
occupied by conjugal and puerperal solicitudes, keep 
the women at a depressed level of cultivation — possibly 
even as compared with the men. 

The general consequences are being every da^^ more 
clearly seen in the gradual dissolution from within 
of the cohesiveness of the old organisation, which is 
further precipitated by the intrusion, for purposes of 
commerce, of an active and healthy ' Gentile ' element, 
and by the decay of the early religious faith consequent 
on the removal by death, one by one, of the original 
Apostles and leaders. The instance is mainly note- 
worthy, in a political sense, from its establishing that, 
even if an Oriental community which has stagnated at 
a polygamic stage can long retain its political organisa- 
tion and some moral health, yet no community which has 
once passed that stage can revert to it without soon 
encountering moral degradation of the deepest sort. 
Not even religious fanaticism, colonising zeal, nor a 



WHETHER MARRIAGE IS DISSOLUBLE. 1G5 

communistic spirit of co-operation, can save it or long 
delay its destruction. 

The essence of marriage is not only that it should 
be monogamic, but that the association it contemplates 
should be life-long. It is this second characteristic, — ■ 
the necessary life-long tenacity of the marriage tie, — 
which has suffered most assault at the hands of modern 
civilisation, or which, more correctly speaking, has the 
greatest diflBculty in establishing itself in the face of 
dislocating and corrupting influences, themselves the 
product of civilisation. 

There is no doubt that the march of civilisation has 
been signalised in a considerable degree by the substi- 
tution, in large departments of relationship, of voluntary 
contract for stains, that is, for involuntary conditions. 
Slavery and Vassalage have given place to domestic 
service and free engagements between workmen and 
capitalists ; while even Government itself is held to 
be based on determinate and reciprocal advantages, 
reaped simultaneously by the Governors and the 
governed respectively, and not on mysterious irre- 
sponsible claims of privilege on one side or on inevit- 
able submission on the other. By a not unnatural 
analogy it has been attempted to extend the reign of 
contract everywhere, even to regions in which it is 
wholly inapplicable. There is a still greater disposi- 
tion to do this when, as in the case of marriage, some 
of the incidents, — such as those involving pecuniary 
arrangements, — may properly become subjects of true 
contracts. 

But though marriage involves, for its inception, the 
highest exercise of unbiassed volition, the existence of 



166 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the state of marriage after its creation excludes^ with 
equal peremptoriiiess, the notion of its dissolubility at' 
the bidding of licence or caprice on either side^ or even 
on both sides. So soon as once the state of marriage 
is created^ the parties to it are no longer in a condition 
of responsibility only to one another. Beside them and 
above them is the community to which they belong. 

The community not only represents the claims of 
possible children and relations of all sorts, deeply con- 
cerned in the fixity and permanence of bonds which 
control their own lives, but has an interest peculiarly 
its own. It is of the utmost concern to the community 
that the family groups which compose it, in the last 
analysis, should be definite and unmutilated; that the 
utmost opportunity should be afforded for the quiet and 
orderly development of the affections, and of the senti- 
njents of mutual trust and dependence which are only 
brought to maturity in the life-long home ; that the 
family should be a school for the restraint of passion, 
for self-discipline and for conciliatory self-surrender, 
not an arena for the practice of irresponsible self-indul- 
gence ; that, in fine, in the family the social capacities 
should gain predominance over the centrifugal indivi- 
dualism of savagely, and the State itself should be at 
once reflected and anticipated in its most ubiquitous 
and natural type. 

All these requirements enforce the notion that for 
marriage to be dissoluble at will, or dissoluble at all, 
except in the most limited class of circumstances, as re- 
gulated by judicial circumspection of the most stringent 
and delicate kind, is suicidal to the true conception of 
marriage itself. In all political constitutions, and in 
all legislation which depends upon them, there is a • 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 167 

place found for the remedy of a condition of things 
which the State is bound to regard as exceptional. 
The recognition of judicial divorce belongs to this 
remedial department of State provisions, and it may, 
undoubtedly, be admitted in such a way as to co-exist 
with the most strenuous support of the life-long per- 
manence of marriage. In the same way a bankruptcy 
law implies no political patronage of recklessness as to 
the payment of debts. 

Though, in the way above indicated, marriage and 
the family relationships which spring from it must be 
treated as essential and primordial elements in State 
life, it is also obvious that the final and best result of 
that life, and not only the initial condition of it, is to im- 
part t3 them their highest development, dignity, and 
stability. In the laws of every State which has advanced 
beyond an embryonic condition, personal relationships 
form the subjects of the most prominent chapters. They 
are usually the pioducts of older and more deeply rooted 
customs than even laws of property, while, on the other 
hand, the necessity of determining questions of suc- 
cession and inheritance, of guardianship and of the 
claims of women, implicate those customs in every part 
of these laws. 

Before quitting the subject of the Family as an essen- 
tial and primary element of political existence, it seems 
desirable to pause for the purpose of recapitulating 
and emphasising the points in which the recognition of 
family life is of importance to the statesman. The secure 
limits which are placed on the tastes and affections 
afford the repose and opportunity demanded for the 
even development of the less animal functions and for 
the gradual attainment of complete supremacy by the 



168 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

spiritual nature. In this way, the best possible field is 
opened out and guarded for the nurture of children, 
their unconscious and conscious education and their 
future separation under the most favourable auspices 
from the parents' home. From this separation new 
families take their rise without the tender links with 
the old ones being broken, and rather with the result of 
increasing than of diminishing the aggregate effective- 
ness and felicity. 

It is needless to say how profoundly concerned is 
the statesman in movements and connexions such as 
these. Not only is it historically true that from the 
union and multiplication of families springs the tribe, 
and from the union and multiplication of tribes springs 
the State, but even in the advanced State domestic 
disorganisation is a sure augury of early political 
disaster. The natural duty incumbent on parents, of 
providing for their children, has in all civilised though 
immature States had a marked effect on the law of 
succession to property. The hplplessness and yet the 
value of the young life has called forth, everywhere, 
laborious provisions for guardianship and protection. 
The mutual responsibilities, physical and moral, of 
husbands and wives, of parents and children, and 
even of remote relatives by consanguinity and afiinity, 
have been, from the earliest dawn of political society, 
matter of concern to the nascent legislature. Not 
indeed, that, at first, regulations in respect of such 
matters are consciously formulated or even dimly con- 
templated. But they grow up with the State itself and 
are but one expression of its growth. 

It may be long before the conscious statesman arises 
and ascertains the value of the laws and institutions 



ECONOMICAL ASSOCIATIONS. 1G9 

which have come down to him with the stream of gene- 
rations and are ready to his hand. He may have to 
prune here, to add there, to abolish elsewhere, and to 
amend and reform everywhere. But the materials and 
elements which are bound up in family life are none of 
his making, and while they will survive him, not the 
longest line of his successors will survive them. 

But the family, essential and momentous as it is, 
as an element in State life, needs supplementary 
elements to maintain it in health and to prevent it 
becoming a mere centre of an individualism not less 
selfish than the isolated member of tbe race. The very 
sentiments to which family life gives preponderance, 
the exclusive and concentrated affections, tbe absorbing 
cares, the desperate solicitudes, the heated passions, — 
strong through confinement in a narrow area and 
aggravated by sympathy, — bave an evil as well as a 
good side> from a political stand-point. Indeed from 
the stand-point of its own well-being and happiness, 
family life cannot afford to be wholly self-contained. 
Its affections and interests must be driven outward; 
and it must learn the meaning of corporate mag- 
nanimity as well as that of individual sacrifice. 

Historically speaking, it is the tribal and village 
organisation which first healthily extends the sym- 
pathies and interests of family life. In the more 
advanced State, when the tribe has become the nation, 
and the village has become the town, the rush of 
economical necessities, as well as the impulse of social 
fellowships, operate to lead families out of themselves 
and to blend them in a great and common life. The 
State, itself, is from the first moments of its growth, 



170 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

reacting upon these spontaneous tendencies and foster- 
ing their injfluence. In the advanced State there are 
endless forms of association which intervene between 
the family and the political community as a whole, and 
it is the due control or use of these associations 
which often supply to the Statesman his most arduous 
problems. 

A distinction, however, has to be made between the 
associated groups of persons which, as the State ad- 
vances, owe their existence to mere economical progress, 
and those of a more complex and varied kind which are 
the product of the organisation of the State itself, though 
they are also of the number of its elements and power- 
fully react upon it. 

To the first or more primitive class of purely eco- 
nomical relationships belong the trade and commercial 
connexions which spring from a constantly increasing 
division of labour. Such are the connexions between 
the shopkeeper and his customers, the landlord and his 
tenant, the employer and the employed, the farmer and 
the farm-labourer, the capitalist and the workman, the 
master and the servant. In this economic and social 
bifurcation of society there are generated great pairs 
of classes of persons, of w^hich each pair represents two 
sets of mutually opposed interests. It may be that 
circumstances favour the concentration of these interests 
in the form of guilds, corporations, companies, clubs and 
trades-unions. The formation of such communities is 
a matter of the keenest interest to the Statesman, and 
he has to determine how far he shall recognise, control, 
encourage, or disallow it. 

Apart from any intervention of the State, the in- 



GUILDS AND TKADES-UNIONS. 171 

fluence of these associated interests must be always of 
a dubious nature, and it must depend on a number of 
concurrent social circumstances wlietlier on the whole 
it is good or bad. Thus, in the case of artisans' guilds, 
such as grew up side by side with the great City com- 
panies in Plantagenet England, one of their effects 
was to stimulate artistic workmanship by guaranteeing 
privileges and monopolies, and by promoting apprentice- 
ships. Another class of eflfects was to prevent com- 
petition, to restrict invention, and to sustain prices at 
a point higher than that determined both by the cost 
of production and by the law of supply and demand. 
The community was thus the loser in some ways and 
the gainer in others. 

It would depend on the particular condition of the 
Society at the time whether more was likely to be 
gained by the encouragement given to special artisans 
or lost by the artificially high prices and the limitation 
of the field of labour. 

It is a well-recognised principle of modern politics to 
abstain as far as possible from actively fostering trades 
and occupations by according privileges and monopolies. 
But when associations of persons are created by volun- 
tary contract, and the associations are potent and ex- 
tensive enough to succeed in confining to themselves 
special kinds of work, it becomes a serious consideration 
for the Statesman how far, if at all, the contract ought 
to be recognised as valid. 

The most modern form in which the problem pre- 
sents itself is that of Trades Unions. The moral use of 
certain forms of these Unions to the workmen them- 
selves is recognised as great. They tend to train the 
workman out of a merelv selfish and individualistic 



172 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

spirit of reckless competition, and to accustom him to 
blend the interests of himself and of his family with those 
of his fellow- workmen. Their actual result has been 
to raise the character of the working-man, to make him 
more prudent, as being under a sense of communistic 
responsibility, and yet less anxious and more self- 
respectful, because less exposed to suffer from the mere 
irresponsible caprice or selfishness of his employers. 

But, on the other hand, the danger inherent in all 
such associations is that the special advantages they 
enjoy are purchased at the cost of the general com- 
munity, in the increase of prices, the limitation of the 
labour market, and the expulsion of capital to foreign 
countries. It will afterwards be seen, in connexion with 
the subject of the Province of Government, that the 
only function left to the State in this matter is the 
protective one, of guarding both those within and 
those without the Union against certain inevitable 
influences of combination which, alone, they might be 
powerless to resist. How far this protection is to go, 
is a questioii of time, place, and circumstances. It only 
needs here to notice that these associative tendencies, 
and the sentiments of attraction and repulsion they 
call up, form some of the most important constitutive 
elements with which the State has to deal. 

In the most advanced condition of the State, associa- 
tion becomes the natural form into which all commercial, 
social, philanthropic, religious, and political, energy 
throws itself; and the State is constantly confronted 
with the question how far it is to recognise, or to restrict, 
the more or less formal organisations which spring up 
in consequence. In whatever terms the answer may 
be made, — and there is no topic on which States and 



ASSOCIATION AS AN ELEMENT OF STATE LIFE. 173 

Statesmen Lave committed, and continue to commit, 
more serious mistakes, — it is well to remember tbat the 
associative principle is the natural and necessary school- 
master to bring the citizen to the perfection of State 
existence. 

It is in the subordinate connexions and relation- 
ships of a social and economic kind with his fellows 
that man learns to look outside himself and his own 
petty life and even outside the life of his family, — 
dear as that is and properly supreme to him as are its 
claims, — and to venture forth his emotions and powers 
into a wider field. He becomes used to multiplied and 
endlessly varied relationships, and is transmuted into 
a fuller being himself. He acquires, as on an exercise 
ground, the instinctive art of weighing the competing 
claims of each against all and of all against each. He 
learns something of what it is to give and to serve, to 
hope and to wait, as well as to receive and to have. 
He dives deeper and deej^er into the mine of human 
feeling and into the possibilities of reciprocal sacrifice. 
He finds himself hourly animated by countless examples, 
— often of the humblest kind, — and knows himself to be 
ever surrounded by a long-familiar cloud of witnesses. 
He is braced up to adjust his every action to the standard 
of duty incumbent on a citizen of what his life-long 
training has taught him to regard as ' no mean city.* 



174 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CONSTITUTIONS. 

It lias already been noticed tliat^ in one sense, the 
conception of a Constitution is wholly of modern 
growth. It is true that in the best times of Greece, if 
not earlier, the question as to the best form of Govern- 
ment in the abstract, and for particular States, had 
already attracted attention; and the general subject 
was regarded as of theoretical as well as of practical 
importance. But it was not till the human race had 
become universally enfranchised in men's minds, and 
the depth of root which political rights have in morality 
had been recognised, that the full extension of the term 
constitution could be reached. 

The Christian Church, indeed, by its organisation, 
its notion of the essential spiritual equality of all men, 
and its competition, at some points, with the secular 
power, prepared the way for the supposition of there 
being some settled condition of human society in which 
each member would have his appropriate place; in 
which each would contribute to the efficiency of all, and 
all to that of each ; and in which no act of violence, 
whether proceeding from a monarch or a mob, could 
suddenly introduce fatal change. 

In the time of the English Commonwealth, religious 
zsal and political activity co-operated in the direction 



CONSTITUTIONS. 175 

botli of practical cliange and of favouring the con- 
struction of ideal forms of social organisation on a basis 
of equal rights for all. Based as these schemes were on 
the rude and weather-beaten materials which the form 
of English Government in the seventeenth century 
supplied, they could, at the best, be but rough sketches 
of an ideal polity. They are mainly important as 
marking the rapid advances which the notion of a 
political Constitution, — as distinguished, on the one 
hand, from a mere body of constitutional laws and, on 
the other, from a description of a form of Government,— 
was making in England and in tlie world at large. 

Montesquieu's panegyric on the English Consti- 
tution, in his Esprit des lois, tended to popularise the 
true conception of a Constitution as belonging to 
universal politics, though France was hardly ripe for 
the idea till the flames of the Revolution had fully 
awakened the national spirit and conscience, or rather 
witnessed to their awakening. 

In England Hobbes, and after him Swift, kept alive 
the political imagery which owed its creation to Puritan 
times and with which the days of the Restoration and 
of the Whig Revolution were little in harmony. 

In the meantime, however, the British Colonies in 
America were upholding the conception of a true Con- 
stitution in a multitude of somewhat varying forms, 
and laying the foundation of the first actual Consti- 
tution which should be constructed on the lines of 
theoretical science and yet should, after a hundred 
years' trial, hold out promise of eternal duration and 
growth. In the written Constitutions of the Thirteen 
Colonies, the English reader will find for the first time 
transferred to systematic writing what are held to be^ 



176 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the inalienable rights, privileges, or prerogatives of an 
Englishman, but the title deeds of which in England are 
only to be found expressed tacitly in institutions or 
scattered up and down in archives and antiquated 
records. 

The right to Trial by Jury, the security against 
despotic Treason trials, the principles of the Habeas 
Corpus Acts, the exemption of an Englishman's person 
from outrage and contumely even in the name of the 
law, the independence of the Judges, and the most 
valuable clauses of the Bill of Eights, will be found 
expressed in clear and concise language and ranged in 
distinct propositions on the face of the written Consti- 
tutions of the several Colonies. These documents are 
of the highest interest in many ways, inasmuch as they 
establish the conception of the constitutional position 
of Englishmen held at home at the time the Charters 
were granted to the several bodies of Emigrants ; and 
also because, indisputably, they supplied the type, and 
much of the language, of the constitutional laws of the 
Union, when these came to be framed. 

The word ^Constitution' in some of its familiar 
modern uses, testifies to the new and profounder 
meaning it has in modern times. Thus a distinction 
is sometimes drawn between a British Colony which has 
a Constitution and one which has not. Here Constitution 
does not mean a form of Government, because what is 
known as a ' Crown Colony,' — which is opposed to a 
Colony with a Constitution, — has a very precisely 
described form of Government, including a Legislative 
and Executive Authority, — subject, of course, as the 
Government of all Colonies is, to the Government at 
home. 



WHAT IS A CONSTITUTION. 177 

A Colony with a Constitution means a Colony which 
has Parliamentary institutions and is no longer governed 
by a small legislative body or Council every member of 
which is directly nominated by the Executive Authority, 
that is the Crown, at home. Thus the word Constitu- 
tion is made co-extensive with the expression ' having 
Parliamentary institutions.' These institutions may 
include a Chamber, nominated, — as now in New South 
Wales, — by the Governor, who himself is appointed by 
the Government at home. But the recognition of a 
genera] right, in all male members of the community, 
under fitting precautions and conditions of uncertain 
but not unmeasured limits, to take part in the Govern- 
ment by themselves or by their proxies, supplies the 
foundation of a true Constitution. Similarly, when 
the numerous revolutions took place in Europe in 1848, 
the result was said to be, in many cases, the granting 
of a Constitution, which meant the introduction, revival, 
or reformation, of Parliamentary and representative 
Government on a tolerably broad basis of electoral 
rights. 

In all these conceptions of a Constitution, there 
enter the ideas of universality, of widely or rather in- 
definitely, diifused personal rights, and of popular 
intervention in Government. These ideas are com- 
patible with a great range of variety in the actual form 
and composition of Government, and, obviously, also 
with a great variety of degrees of completeness with 
which the essential notion of a Constitution is embodied 
in a political organisation. 

Constitutions may be good or bad, weak or strong, 
lasting or transient, even popular or aristocratic. In 
fact it may come about, at certain moments, that the 



178 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Constitution exists in idea and sentiment only, and 
that, owing to accidental events, the people of a country 
have no political rights at all. In such a case, as to 
some extent in France under the third Empire, and 
even in Russia and in Egypt now, the Constitution is 
in suspense. It is a matter of hope, regret, and perhaps 
of expectation, and soon of revolutionary zeal. But a 
country which has once imbibed the notion of a Con- 
stitution differs wholly from one in which that notion 
has never been framed or could never be framed, as in 
China, and the Native States of India, and in large 
portions of the Ottoman dominions and the uncivilised 
States of Africa. 

In all the countries which, according to the principles 
already enunciated, are at present the proper subjects 
of Political Science, the idea of a Constitution has made 
considerable advance ; and, in some of them, an actual 
Constitution has been wrought out into shape with no 
small amount of elaborateness in the execution of the 
details. 

In respect of the practical task of planning a Con- 
stitution, an initial question presents itself on the 
threshold as to whether the terms of the Constitution 
can be completely or satisfactorily expressed in writing. 
During recent years, — beginning with the Constitution 
of the United States, — a large number of Constitutions 
have been translated into the terms of written law ; and 
even in Constitutions, such as that of England, in which 
the quantity of unwritten law and usage is the greatest, 
there is still a large and growing proportion of the 
whole which takes the form of Statute Law. 

The question, however, is not whether it is witliin the 
wit of man to write a Constitution down and to describe 



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 179 

in precise terms and phrases tlie riglits and duties of all 
public officials and all members of the community in 
respect of Government, but whether, when this is done 
ever so skilfully and providently, there must not still 
remain, outside any constitutional Code, the most im- 
portant part of all, which is too indefinite, too subtle, 
too fluctuating within imperceptible spaces of time, 
to admit of compression within the limits of exact 
language. 

In the United States, after all the provisions of 
the existing Constitution are described with as much 
exactness as could be attained, there is still contemplated 
the possibility of a change in the Constitution being 
desirable, and an elaborate electoral and representative 
machinery has been devised in view of the necessity of 
bringing about a change. As a matter of fact a number 
of more or less important changes have been brought 
about in this way, and no insuperable difiiculty has been 
experienced in working the machinery. But, supposing 
that the change desired was at once considerable and 
yet not such as to commend itself to the large majority 
requisite for giving legal effect to it, the only result 
must be the alternative of social disruption or revolution. 

Such a state of things did come at the time of the 
Secession war; and it was found that no mere written 
language could bind the fealty of the w^hole people. 
The Constitution, as it stood, was only acceptable to 
the Southern States so long as a series of favourable 
accidents gave them the political influence they desired. 
When the Constitution legally operated in a direction 
less favourable to their interests, they resisted the 
execution of the law and claimed to dissolve the Union. 

Thus in times of real emergency, when interests and 



180 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

passions are divided, it matters little whether a Consti- 
tution is written or unwritten. There are felt to be 
forces and instincts stronger than the law, as they are 
the basis of all law. It is in the hereditary and habitual 
training of these forces and instincts, perhaps continued 
for centuries, that what may be called a true constitu- 
tional temper really exists. Where such a training is 
found, anarchy is impossible, and revolution is shortlived. 
Where it is not found, a permanent condition of order 
is hardly attainable and revolutions are incessant. 

The recent history of France illustrates the state of 
a country undergoing a rapid constitutional training 
through the vicissitudes of a single century. The con- 
dition of the Ottoman Empire shows how easy it is to 
frame written constitutions and to enact them, but how 
impossible it is to impose them where no advance has 
been made in the ethical preparation of the people and 
of the ruling class. 

There is, however, no doubt that it is for the 
interests of order and of regular Government to have 
as many parts as possible of the Constitution reduced to 
writing. Not indeed that discussion is thereby pre- 
vented, as may be s6en by studying the volumes of law 
written on the ' Constitutional Limitations ' of the 
Government of the United States, and on the operation 
of the written Constitutions of the English Colonies. 
But in times of ardent differences of opinion, not to say 
of discord and sedition, it is a great advantage on the side 
of order to have a plain course of proceeding mapped 
out by written law. Action proceeds while people's 
minds are still being made up, and, before they have 
finally chosen their side, an act performed has acquired 
the pretensions of prescription. 



THE FEENCH CONSTITUTION. 181 

The French nation experienced in 1878 the ad- 
vantage of their written Constitution when, in precise 
accordance with its terms, they elected a successor to 
President McMahon without delay or hesitation ; and 
at various epochs in English "history the advantage of 
a written rule or even of a well remembered precedent 
stored up in the archives of written history, however 
imperfectly applicable, has suggested and determined a 
course of action which has commended itself to the 
bulk of the community by its show of formality, and 
has thereby arrested revolution. Instances of this are 
supplied by the operation of the Act of Settlement in 
facilitating the accession of the House of Hanover, and 
of the Regency Acts of the Eeign of George III., each 
of which smoothed the way for the passing of its suc- 
cessor. 

The first question w^hich has to be settled by a Con- 
stitution is as to the number of persons who are to take 
part in the Government, and the share in it which each 
person is to have. Mr. Austin, in his celebrated Lectures 
on the 'Province of Jurisprudence/ pointed out with 
inimitable clearness the fact, which is not so much con- 
tested as neglected, that, at any given period in the 
existence of a political community, there is some person 
or assemblage of persons who are habitually obeyed by 
the bulk of that community. 

In the Greek communities, as investigated by Aris- 
totle, the absorbing question was as to the number of 
persons who formed this sovereign authority ; and even 
in modern times the mere breadth of the legislative 
Assembly or Assemblies, and the numerical extension 
of the electoral surface, are points of considerable rele- 
9 



182 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

vancy in tlie comparison of the merits of Constitutions. 
But there are many reasons which now conspire to re- 
duce the significance of the mere quantitative estimates 
which, to the minds of Montesquieu and even of De 
Tocqueville, were the basis of the distinction between a 
Monarchy, an Aristocracy, and a Democracy. 

The deeper notion of human rights which is acquiring 
the dignity and the fixity of an ethical maxim changes 
the question as to how many, and who, ought to be ad- 
mitted to share in the Government, into the converse 
question as to whether any, and who, can be legitimately 
excluded from sharing at all. The victory which was 
obtained for the emancipated slaves in America by their 
admission to the electoral Franchise was as much a 
gain to the human race, regarded as capable of political 
organisation, as to the immediate objects of the enfran- 
chising Amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States. In the same way the movement which promises 
an early success in favour of Women's Suffrage in 
England, by removing an obstacle, based only on tradi- 
tion and prejudice, and confessed to be of no practical 
value, — even if not economically detrimental, — goes far 
to fortify the notion that, apart from special and clearly 
established personal disqualifications, the right of taking 
part in Government belongs, as an essential part of the 
heritage of civilised humanity, to all alike. 

Even in the times of Hobbes and of Locke, the two 
theories, — in the somewhat cumbrous legal forms of 
the Divine Eight and the Social Contract, — were being 
brought face to face. Both these conceptions have, — ^ 
after a brilliant history well sketched out by Sir H. S. 
Maine in his ' Ancient Law,' — dissolved away before 
the analytical solvents of History and Logic. But there 



VIEWS OF THE TKUE BASIS OF A CONSTITUTION. 183 

still remain sternly antithetical to each other two 
inconsistent views of the true basis on which a consti- 
tution ought to be founded : namely, that of procuring 
the absolutely best law and administration, and that of 
procuring law and administration which, if perhaps not 
the best, yet is the best expression of the clearly ascer- 
tained will of the people, or of the preponderant 
majority of the people at th^ time. 

These two views either appear on the surface or are 
covertly implied on every occasion of electoral change. 
It is usually attempted to make a compromise between 
them, and disputants who recognise the value of each 
view, when isolated from the other, do not always 
perceive the extent to which they are, or may be, 
incompatible. 

It is surprising how many afl&liated questions are 
connected with this primary discrepancy. Such ques- 
tions are, whether a representative system ought to 
succeed in reproducing in the legislative assembly 
all important phases of political opinion or only the 
dominant phase, or a few dominant and ostensibly 
competing phases ; whether representation in any sense 
can be looked at as a satisfactory and permanent instru- 
ment of Government, or whether (as some English 
followers of Auguste Comte hold) it marks only a 
transitory and immature condition, for the needs of 
which it provides at best but a rough and cumbrous 
machinery; what are the mutual claims of local and of 
central Government ; and to what extent the Executive 
Authority should be subjectetl to popular checks and 
control. 

With the view of ascertaining the true principles 



184 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

which, for the purpose of a Science of Politics, must 
be held to underlie all profitable discussion of this class 
of subjects, a few broad premises have been, in modern 
times, clearly established, and must henceforward be 
taken as starting points in the argument. 

One premise is that the Art of Government tends 
increasingly to become, in quite a different sense from 
anything known before, a specialised art, needing 
peculiar training, concentrated attention, and long 
and appropriate study. The internal administration 
and the conduct of the Foreign relations of a Modern 
State are, with every advance in the arts of life and in 
economical and social organisation, becoming matters 
of special knowledge. 

In Ancient times, and in the Middle Ages, the 
governing class no doubt were far in advance of the 
community, and possessed acquirements and diplomatic 
accomplishments for which there is less opening now. 
But the financial, the moral, the religious, and the 
sanitary, — let alone the judicial and military, — functions 
of a modern State, even of the youngest and smallest, 
are complicated and embarrassing to an extent for 
which there could be no precedent in the older world. 

It is not now, however, the fact that the classes 
habitually called upon to take part in the Government 
are better informed than other classes of the Community. 
Indeed the opposite is usually the case ; and the persons 
best informed in their several trades, occupations, and 
professions, are content to devolve the charge of Govern- 
ment on persons less specially instructed in any peculiar 
branches of knowledge but, otherwise, generally com- 
petent and trustworthy. 

The result is that the art of Government is becoming 



HISTORY OF REPRESENTATION. 185 

a new and special one, quite distinguishable from every 
other art, and yet involving some cognisance or, at 
least, some recognition of the claims and province of 
every other art and human interest. So far from this 
becoming less true as time goes on, it will become 
more true with each step of social advance as expressed 
ill a new division or subdivision of occupations, and 
the danger rather is that the art of Government may 
need such an amount of distribution into departments 
as may seriously impair the due co-ordination and 
supervision of the whole. 

The question, then, is presented, how far the pre- 
mise which propounds this specialisation of the art of 
Government can be reconciled with another premise 
to the effect that, with the growth of civilisation, the 
claims to intervene in the Government of the country 
are increasingly recognised as inherent attributes of 
humanity. 

The only solutions which have been attempted of 
this problem have been found in the devices, firstly, of 
Representation and, secondly, of Party Government. 

The result of all the investigations of M. Guizot, of 
Mr. Hallam, and of later writers, into the history of the 
modern institution of Eepresentation is that this insti- 
tution is rooted partly in the representative Councils of 
the Christian Church, — which themselves as time went 
on reproduced the administrative and judicial usages 
of the centralised Eoman Empire,^ — and in the nature 
of Feudalism, involving as it did the substitution of man 
for man as its essence, and a representative system in 
the Courts as its inseparable working machinery. 

The later development of representative ideas and 
facts in the modern political world, beginning in the 



186 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

history of the English Parliament and recalled to life 
on the Continent of Europe by the first French Eevo- 
lution, is only a chain of direct consequences from 
notions which had been deeply instilled into the con- 
sciousness of the Teutonic and Romaic races. The 
necessities of confederation which had been felt and 
acted on in America a hundred years before the War of 
Independence, and the operation of the Federal systems 
of Switzerland and the United Netherlands, had further 
familiarised men's minds with the practical convenience 
attending the conscious delegation, by the many to the 
few, of the forces of Government. 

In the course of this evolution a still unsettled 
question has been mooted which is involved in the term 
delegation^ and which contains in itself the gist of the 
theoretical embarrassment which is inherent in repre- 
sentation. It may be asked to what extent is there 
implied in representation, or in political delegacy, 
identity of opinion and of resolution, between the re- 
presentative and those whom, to some extent or other, 
he is held to personate. There is room, here, obviously, 
for a great variety of degrees of conformity of sentiment 
between the two. The representative may be the merest 
mouthpiece and echo of conclusions reached elsewhere. 
Or he may be left to say and do as he likes, according 
to the dictation of new circumstances, — those who 
depute him being either indifferent to the matters in 
issue or content to leave ulterior courses and decisions 
in the hands of one in whom they confide more than in 
any other person at the moment available. Or he may 
receive, — like an ambassador, — general instructions, 
but retain the capacity to diverge from them if un- 
foreseen emergencies suggest a new course. 



CnUKCH COUNCILS AND HEPEESENTATION. 187 

Upon this cliaracteristicallj modern difficulty at- 
tending representation little light is thrown by recourse 
to tlie history of representation in the past. In 
Feudal times, the one question which absorbed or over- 
shadowed all others was that of money, or in place of 
money, of personal service ; and the mutual economical 
dependence of class upon class was so close that no 
feudal lord could grant to his superior an extra- 
ordinary levy, or aid, or burden, without himself 
incurring proportional loss or deprivation. Thus the 
identity of interest was complete and manifest, though 
it extended over a narrow range. 

In ecclesiastical matters, again, the subjects dis- 
cussed at Church Councils ranged over an enormous 
area, doctrinal and practical, — yet the Bishops in 
attendance, who personated the lower clergy and the 
congregations, were, no doubt, sufficiently in advance, 
in point of learning and of familiarity with the ques- 
tions at issue, to demand at their hands an amount 
of personal confidence which the coarser interests of 
politics, better understood by the mass of the com- 
munity, could hardly have secured. 

It is in very recent times, since legislation, instead 
of being exceptional, has become continuous and all- 
embracing, and when the members of a Legislature 
can claim every day less and less of a monopoly of 
instruction, that a decision has to be come to as to 
the amount of identity which is to prevail between a 
political deputy and his constituents. The subject is 
naturally complicated by the fact that the same causes 
which promote an endless discrepancy of opinion and 
of sentiment between the deputy and the most sym- 
pathetic of his constituents tend likewise to promote 



188 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the discrepancy between one of those constituents and 
another. 



The device^ accidental invention, or casual existence 
of government by Party has gone some way to prevent 
the essential difficulty which attends representation 
from being obtruded as it otherwise must have been. 
In fact, even now the imperfection of representative 
Government is more felt in those places, such as the 
British Colonies, in which parties are not strongly 
organised and the spirit of party does not mount high, 
than in such a country as England, in which many 
circumstances concur to sustain this form of mani- 
festation of political activity. 

In spite of the ever growing assimilation of opinion, 
among all intelligent persons, on those large classes of 
questions, dynastical and economical, which, — partly 
owing to sentimental prepossessions and partly to the 
"unequal spread of knowledge,— once divided them, there 
appears no sign of an absence of fervour for political 
combination; and in the House of Commons, as well as 
in the country at large, it is still possible to distribute 
into two distinct camps the vast mass of political com- 
batants. 

The important point to consider is whether this 
phenomenon is to be regarded as permanent, or as 
a mere cinder-heap, artificially kept alight. Some 
lessons may be learnt in respect of the future of Party 
from glancing at popular government as conducted in 
other countries in which the play of new social con- 
ditions has been less controlled than in England by 
traditional institutions having a strong local hold on 
the imagination, by the firm tenure of an Aristocratic 



HISTORY OF TAKTY IN THE UNITED STATES 189 

Assembly, and by the pertinacious retention of a reli- 
ofious Establishment. 

In America, the history of Party since the founda- 
tion of the Union would of itself be a valuable contri- 
bution to the study of Political Science. Professor 
Van Hoist's Historical treatise on the Constitution of 
the United States, which has been translated from the 
original German into English, and which is founded on 
a minute investigation of all State papers to be found 
in America or in England, as well as on observations 
conducted in America, will be found to contain all the 
materials for such a history. It is only not such a 
history, because it is so much more. 

On the whole it may be said that, soon after 
the Union was constituted, the only question which 
broke up all persons taking part in Politics into two 
opposite factions was that of States-rights ; one faction 
inclining to the notion that the basis of the Constitu- 
tion was the inherent independence of the several 
States ; the other faction being more favourable to 
the Federal Constitution, and holding that the several 
States only retained so much independence as had been 
expressly left them when the Union was constituted. 

Of course the forms and grounds of opposition 
were not formulated so distinctly and concisely as 
this. It was only by experience, and especially by the 
different policy which, owing in some measure to dif- 
ferent geographical conditions, emerged on the question 
of Slavery, that the organisation into the ' democratic ' 
and ' republican ' parties became complete. 

What is most remarkable about this history is that 
while, on the face of it, there would seem to be no con- 
nexion between these American parties and the olJ 



190 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

English parties (whicli prevailed in America at one 
period, and in name are scarcely yet extinct) of Whig 
and Tory, yet the supporters of absolute State Eights 
became the advocates of slavery and the opponents of 
the party of Progress. They vrere, in fact, the party of 
the landed proprietors and planters of the South, as 
opposed to that of the commercial world and petty agri- 
culturists of the North. Thus it was brought about 
that the most celebrated, and still momentous, of party 
divisions in America was, and is, based on an opposi- 
tion of interest far more than, — as was the case with 
the old English parties, — on an opposition of sentiment, 
of religious belief, or of personal loyalty. It is, how- 
ever, true that the seeds of the opposition between the 
two leading American parties will be found in the dif- 
ferent circumstances of the early colonists and in the 
personal differences of the various classes of these 
colonists themselves. 

The history of Party in the United States has been 
affected, during the present century, by various waves 
of political interest and agitation which have tempo- 
rarily occupied or obscured the whole horizon. Thus 
the expediency of extending by any modes the terri- 
torial area of the Union ; the advisability of liquidating, 
in one form or another, the financial obligations of the 
Union ; the policy of reconstructing the Union after the 
War of Secession in one fashion or in another ; and the 
more personal questions raised by the recognised neces- 
sity of taking measures of one sort or another to repress 
official corruption ; are all topics which have proved, in 
their time, weighty and stirring enough to bind together 
strong political parties in the firm ties of mutual 
loyalty, for the purpose of severally carrying out their 



IIISTOKY or PAllTY IN AU8TKALASIA. 1-91 

own ends even at the sacrifice of the independent pro- 
clivities of masses of individual persons. The capacity 
and habit of free and spontaneous organisation, which 
exist in the United States more than anywhere else, 
and for w^hich the mechanical working of the Con- 
stitution of each State and of the Union itself is an 
incessant training, favour the rapid generation, as well 
as the early generation, of political parties. Thus it is 
difficult for a foreigner ever to learn and understand 
the quickly coined phrases of party-warfare. They are 
often out of use before they have had time to be ab- 
sorbed by literature or translated even into the English 
spoken at the other side of the Atlantic. 

The political experience of the Colonies of Australasia 
since New South Wales and Victoria obtained, in 
1855, from the British Parliament, complete Parlia- 
mentary Constitutions, differs instructively from the ex- 
perience of the United States in respect of Government 
by Party. In the Colonies of New South Wales and 
Victoria, the circumstances of political life have not 
succeeded in calling into being any deep and widespread 
and strongly marked oppositions of opinion and of senti- 
ment analogous to those represented by the terms Whig 
and Tory^ Liberal and Conservative^ in England, or by 
the terms Democrat and Republican in the United States. 

The parties in those Colonies have hitherto rather 
resembled the secondary and transitory parties already 
alluded to as fitfully crossing the stage of American 
politics without leaving any permanent memorial or 
even influence. They have usually centred round some 
prominent personage, and been connected with some 
strongly felt and clearly expressed interest. 



192 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

It is true that the political life of these colonies is 
not yet of thirty years' growth. But their institutions 
were framed, formally, after the model of English 
institutions, so far as was possible, and there has been 
no break of revolution or anarchy to interfere with a 
rapid unfolding of all natural political products. 

The most notable exhibition of a true party organi- 
sation, as distinguished from mere accidental personal 
loyalty to a leader, has taken place in Victoria, in 
which colony the supporters of a policy favourable to 
the aggrandisement of large landed proprietors on the 
one hand, and, on the other, those of a policy favourable 
to an equalisation of fortunes and to the diminution of 
the influence of wealth have, for years past, ranged 
themselves in camps of increasingly menacing propor- 
tions and dispositions. The battle has been mainly 
fought round the constitution of the lesser House or 
Legislative Council, which has been from the first a 
plutocratic representative Assembly. As it will be a 
long time before the absorption by agriculture of the 
plains now employed by wealthy pastoral occupiers, 
and the exhaustion of the mines, have reduced the 
opposition between the few rich and the many with 
only moderate means, this ground of party feud will 
probably be long-lived. The place will, probably, be 
taken, by newly evolved oppositions of interest which 
will be of a fleeting kind, and scarcely deserving the 
name of party differences. 

The lesson taught by these Colonies, — as by the 
history of the United States, — is that in the demo- 
cratic organisation of the future the opposition of 
conflicting interests will be found a more solid basis of 
political organisation than personal moral differences 



HISTORY OF PARTY IN FRANCE. 193 

or sentimental ties. These will have tlieir wei<>;lit as 
between one person and another, but they will be 
shifted from a primary to a secondary place. The 
main hope is that the progress of education and the 
diffusion of knovvledore will lead to more enii^rhtened 
views of what people's best interests really are ; and, 
although it must always be expected that, in the com- 
petition of economical forces, one man's loss will be 
another's gain, yet it makes a great difference whether 
a fair and just balance is preserved, on the whole, 
between the losses and the gains of all, or whether, as 
in the old world, the gain is exclusively for the few 
and the loss for the many. 

Party organisation is invaluable so far as it is 
confined to maintaining a wisely adjusted balance of 
political and economical forces. It is mischievous and 
an anachronism if, by resting on spurious sentiments 
and unmeaning or hypocritically-professed beliefs, it 
arrests, from time to time, real improvement, and 
becomes a hindrance instead of a help to national 
development. 

Prom the time of the Restoration in France till 
now, the history of Party in that country has passed 
through various phases which illustrate these remarks. 
The best marked distinctions have been based upon 
dynastical ties or preferences ; the Buonapartists, the 
Orleanists, and the Bourbons each commanding a fol- 
lowing just sufficient to interfere with a Government 
conducted by either of the other parties, which yet 
could not themselves solidly combine. 

The Empire of Napoleon III. was mainly serviceable 
to France by interposing a lengthened period of prescrip- 
tion a^^rainst the Orleanists and both branches of the 



194 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Bourbons; by securing peremptory order and unques- 
tioned submission ; and by affording time and oppor- 
tunity for the exhaustion of the Napoleonic allegiance 
already owned by none but a few Parisian veterans, 
and which a newly grown population hardly remem- 
bered. Under this Empire, however, the party of the 
Buonapartists naturally received an enormous impulse 
and extension, and a new party, which the Eevolution 
settlement had called into existence, — that of the con- 
servative peasant-proprietors, — became an important 
factor in politics. 

The result of the fall of the Empire by the event of 
Sedan was an early reconstruction of political parties. 
The peasant-proprietor could no longer see in Buona- 
partism a security for order, or for peace, or for escape 
from the proscription, or for regiilated taxation. The 
financial basis of the Empire at Paris was shaken to 
the ground by the siege of Paris, and by the financial 
embarrassment caused by the German debt. There sur- 
vived only two possible grounds for the construction of 
new Parties wide and influential enough to govern 
France. These were the party who were in favour of 
order and peace, at any sacrifice of dynastic allegiance 
or antecedent sentiment, and those who saw in some 
reconstitution of the Eepublic, — which two Napoleons 
had first turned to their own account and then over- 
thrown, — a meeting point, and the only meeting point, 
to which all France would sooner or later rally. 

A coalition of the Republicans and of the party of 
peace and order produced the Thiers Government, and 
then a change in the balance of the coalitionists pro- 
duced the Government of Marshal McMahon. The 
decisive development of pure Eepublicanism expressed 



HISTOKY OF PARTY IN FKANCE. 195 

itself ill the French Constitution of 1875, and the 
working: out of this Constitution has witnessed the 
growth of parties founded on little else than mere 
degrees of democratic conviction, expressing themselves 
in demands for a more or less popular system of repre- 
sentation and for a more or less radical reform of the 
conservative Senate. The attitude of France towards 
Germany, and in respect of Foreign policy generally, 
has introduced a special element into party warfare 
which must be regarded as of purely accidental signi- 
ficance. 

The history of Party in France during the first half 
of the present century recals the vicissitudes of the 
political parties in England during the fifty years 
after the accession of William III. ; but England has 
no parallel, — unless it be found in the parental home- 
policy of George III.\s reign, — to the operation of the 
empire of Napoleon. In England the Hanoverian 
dynasty became more and more consolidated and asso- 
ciated with unbroken successes abroad, and, at no late 
date, with legislative improvements and with accessions 
of public liberty at home. Thus, at this day, party in 
England is undergoing a slow and steady transforma- 
tion in which it is almost by forced subterfuges and 
suppressed convictions that political organisation is 
maintained. 

In France the various shades of Republicanism 
will, no doubt, as political activity becomes diffused 
throughout the country, connect themselves with real 
and clearly understood interests. The proper appre- 
ciation of these interests, and the intelligent support 
of them, will afford a sound basis of political activity, 
and statesmen will find that they can hold power only 



196 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

by introducing real and substantial reforms, and not 
by appealing to shadowy and superficial sentiments, 
however momentarily popular. 

The general result of this inquiry into the place 
likely to be occupied by party organisation, as political 
communities become more democratically constituted, 
is that real practical interests will, as grounds of party 
divisions, more and more succeed to the place of 
sentimental predilections; that these interests will 
become increasingly intelligible and even laudable, 
instead of being secret and sinister; and that while the 
economical and industrial organisation of society will 
always bring large classes of persons into polar oppo- 
sition to each other, on certain points of legislation 
and administration, yet the competition between these 
classes will proceed more and more on grounds admit- 
ting of logical statement and discussion and not main- 
tained, on either side, without professed subordination 
to the common welfare of the community as a whole. 

In fact party will become the political expression of 
the real and necessary distinctions of interests which are 
implied in the division of labour and of social functions. 
Thus, instead of being superseded, it is likely to grow 
and develope. It will serve to maintain unity and con- 
tinuity in government and to secure the preference of 
what is most important at a particular moment to what 
is least so. It will continue to train the community in 
habits of loyalty to worthy leaders, and in the practice 
of making sacrifices for sufficient ends. On the other 
hand, it may be expected and hoped that more and more 
of what is still, and has long been, most immoral in party 
combinations, that is, the artificial adhesion to opinions 
long obsolete, the prevalent indifference to truth, and 



rilE FUTURE OF PARTY. 197 

the unscrupulous support of unworthy champions, who 
are good for nothing but to comply formally with a 
party test, will pass away and give place to influences 
already, in the most advanced countries, making them- 
selves distinctly felt. 

Assuming, then, that the practice of party combina- 
tion must be taken as a permanent and essential portion 
of political organisation, the question returns as to how 
the practice must be regarded as necessarily affecting 
the novel relations of the governors and the governed. 

It has been seen that the modern problem of political 
organisation presupposes two data, — one, that the art 
of Government has become special, difficult, and ab- 
sorbing, in a way it never could have been before ; and 
the other, that the great mass of the population of a 
modern State has unprecedented opportunities and 
capacities for intervening in governmental acts, — 
whether they do so by freely choosing their governors, 
by ousting and changing them, by free criticism, or by 
anarchical revolutions. The problem can only be solved 
by the use of such political constructions as can, first, 
secure the utmost amount of trained skill and know- 
ledge for the service of Government ; as can, secondly, 
obtain for the Government the fullest measure of 
support and acquiescence; can, thirdly, turn to the 
largest account the peculiar ability possessed by the 
people at large to pronounce clear moral judgments 
and to correct the bureaucratic and despotic disposition 
which experience proves the mere continuous exercise 
of the art of Government to bring with it invariably • 
and can, fourthly, prevent the need or desire for Revo- 
lution. 



198 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Any political macliinery or proposed reform of exist- 
ing machinery must be judged by the contribution it 
makes, not to the attainment of any one of those ends 
alone, but to the attainment of all of them without the 
sacrifice of one. It has been more by historical acci- 
dent than by political ingenuity that experiments 
towards the attainment of some or all of these ends 
have been hitherto witnessed in different countries. 
But in different countries in ancient and in modern 
times a sufficient number of devices have been em- 
ployed to indicate the lines of the directions which 
political constructiveness can alone take in the future. 
For the sake of brevity of expression, the rallying 
points of controversy in this matter may be desig- 
nated as (1) the extension and distribution of the 
Electoral Franchise, including the questions of the 
rights of Minorities, and of the machinery of Repre- 
sentation ; (2) the duration of Parliaments ; (3) the 
expediency of having one or more Chambers, their com- 
position, and their mutual relations, if more than one; 
(4) the relation of the Executive to the Legislative 
Authority and to the people. 

(1.) The Extension and Distribution of the Electoral 
Franchise. 

The positions which have already been assumed as 
starting points for modern political construction, and, 
therefore, as already belonging to Political science, are, 
first, that the object of political organisation is not 
the attainment of good laws and administration as 
abstracted from all consideration of the sentiments of 
the people and of the relations between the governors 
and the governed ; and, secondly, that a presumption 



DISTRIBUTION OF THE ELECTORAL FRANCHISE. 199 

exists against the exclusion of any person or class of 
persons from all right of control over the Government. 

Admitting these positions, which are rapidly, though 
unconsciously acquiring the force of axioms, and which 
each new revolution and constitutional change tends to 
reinforce, it is not necessary to travel over ground 
which has been thoroughly explored and occupied 
by facts rather than by a 'priori reasoning. It may 
be laid down as an indispensable basis of Govern- 
ment in all States which look to a future, instead of 
merely clinging to a past, that the political franchise 
is presumably co-extensive with the physical, moral, 
and mental capacity to do any legal act whatever; and 
that, to adopt a concise though hackneyed phrase. 
Government is to be conducted in some measure by the 
people as well as for the people. 

The real difficulty arises when it is attempted to 
ascertain what shall be the proportions in which dif- 
ferent classes of persons, all in the possession of the 
franchise, shall share their control over the Govern- 
ment, and what shall be the amount of that control. 
In other words, the Constitution of the State has to 
determine both the relations of different classes of 
electors to each other and the relations of electors 
generally, — that is the governed, — to the elected, — 
that is (speaking broadly) the governors. 

The extreme theory in respect of the mutual rela- 
tions of classes of electors is to recognise no classes or 
distinctions of persons at all, but to give every person, 
of sufficient understanding to know what they are 
doing, and not disqualified by taint of crime, an equal 
electoral right. This democratical constitution, in 
order to be complete and logically consistent, must be 



200 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

reproduced in the composition of all the constituent 
parts of the Legislature, if more than one, and must be 
secured against an undue preponderance of the Legis- 
lature or the Executive by short Parliaments and by 
effective control, at every point, of the Executive by the 
Legislative Authority. 

Such a condition of things is often pictured as the 
consummation of Democracy, and is the ideal of nume- 
rous classes of Eeformers. There has probably never 
been any State which has satisfied all the requirements 
here indicated; and there is none which approximately 
satisfies them now. 

Such States as present the nearest approximation to 
a purely democratic constitution, such as the United 
States of America, the Swiss Confederation, and the 
British Colonies in Australia, will all be found, even 
on a superficial view, to fail in some essential charac- 
teristic. In all these States the Executive Autho- 
rity, or, it may be, the Federal Legislature, or, — 
in the British Colonies, — a nominated or plutocratic 
Upper House, has a disproportionate share in the con- 
trol of the government ; and that, not only at par- 
ticular moments, which may be incidental to their 
character, but permanently and by an inevitable process 
of encroachment on the purely popular organs of 
Government. 

It would seem, indeed, that the more purely demo- 
cratic is the constitution of the State in its prominent 
structure, the more urgent necessity is felt for a forcible 
Executive to balance, control, and direct the popular 
energies. History is full of examples of the tyrant 
succeeding to the organised mob, and (as Aristotle and 
Montesquieu pointed out) it requires superlative virtue 



DISTEIBUTION OF ELECTOE.NX POWEPx. 201 

to prevent a mass of equally enfranclused citizens 
degenerating, at least occasionally, from the highest to 
the lowest type of political authority. The opposition 
presented in the Constitution of the United States 
between the firm seat of the President for the period of 
four years together with his almost uncontrolled Execu- 
tive authority in some of the most critical departments 
of government, and the popular mode and conception 
of his election, is felt by the best American statesmen 
themselves to be an anomaly for which a remedy must 
some time or other be found. Even in the British 
Colonies, so often as the popular will is really brought 
into conflict with the Upper House or the Governor, 
who represents the Parent State, the country is only 
saved from revolution by concessions and compromises, 
— that is, by repudiating the right of control and recog- 
nising the supreme dominion of the people themselves. 
It appears then that an equal distribution of electoral 
power is no security for the maintenance of what, in 
the highest sense, may be called popular rights, and for 
the permanent dominion of the popular will. Except 
where, as in the limited world of ancient Athens, the 
space is confined enough to admit of rival orators and 
of demagogues disputing with each other the right of 
supreme control, that right will always be exercised in 
undue predominance by the person, or Council, or 
Assembly, in habitual possession of the organised forces 
of the State. He or they are constantly at the helm, 
and have the incommunicable advantage of unity of 
purpose, of concentrated knowledge of facts, and of 
acquired technical skill in rule. The people, on the 
other hand, are in danger of being satisfied, as under 
the Empire of Napoleon III. in France, with a mere 



202 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

show of reserved power testified by such a mockery of 
electoral forms as was exhibited in the plebiscite. 

Even though, as in the Australian Colonies, strong 
divergencies of interest may be found among the 
people, yet these are either pitted one against the other 
in such a way as to enable the Executive Authority 
to re-assert and establish its power by arbitrating 
adroitly, and at critical moments between them ; or 
one class of interests predominates over the rest, and 
becomes master of the Executive Authority, all other 
interests being thereby rendered subservient to the 
supreme class of interests. This state of things existed 
in the United States, when the Slave States dominated 
for years together over the Union and rebelled at the 
first symptom of a loss of power. The actual political 
equivalence of all citizens becomes the engine of a 
subtle and secret despotism, because the government 
is exercised in the name of the whole people, and all 
insurrection in pursuit of popular aims, as against a 
monarch or an aristocracy, is out of the question. Public 
liberty is not ignored or defied as in a State overtly 
governed by a despotic authority, but is rather silently 
eaten away under all the forms of a Government holding 
its mandate from nothing else than the popular will. 

It is necessary to examine with some care the actual 
barriers which still exist in the best governed countries 
against such a perversion of democratical institutions, 
and to consider how far they can be treated as perma- 
nent elements of a political system, or how far they must 
give place to advantageous substitutes. 

In England the existing obstacles to a complete 
equalisation of electoral rights are found, firstly, in 
the aristocratic constitution of the Second Chamber; 



ELECTORAL EQUALITY. 203 

secondly, in the plutocratic basis of the county franchise; 
thirdly, in the unequal distribution of population through- 
out the electoral areas ; and fourthly, in the balance 
maintained between the amount of representation re- 
spectively accorded to boroughs and to counties. The 
special representation of Universities in the House of 
Commons, of the Church, and now, in some measure, of 
the Law, in the House of Lords, is of less momentous, 
though of significant, account for the same purpose ; and 
the indirect influence of Royalty cannot be wholly neg- 
lected, though the constitutional action of the Crown is 
almost wholly subordinated to the requirements of purely 
popular government. The influence and value of a 
second Chamber in itself form a separate topic, and 
may be treated quite independently of the consideration 
of the equal or unequal distribution of electoral power. 
The existence of such a Chamber, as in the United States 
and now in France, is found to be compatible with the 
perfect electoral equality of all citizens, though it may 
serve to obviate some of the natural consequences of 
this equality. 

The actual obstacles to electoral equality above 
enumerated, — and they may be taken as fair specimens 
of all the classes of similar obstacles found in any other 
countries professing to be governed on popular prin- 
ciples, — are mainly due to historical causes, generally 
of an accidental nature. It is true that successive 
Reform Acts, following on long and anxious debates, 
have largely modified the electoral constitution of Eng- 
land as handed down to the present century. But the 
conservative spirit and the conservative forces of the 
country have been hitherto potent enough to preserve 
almost unimpaired the leading principles implied in the 



204 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

constitutional antithesis of town and country, in the 
structure of the House of Lords, and in the disregard to 
purely numerical considerations in the distribution of 
seats. At this day the notions of equal electoral dis- 
tricts based on population only, and of the equalisation of 
the town and county franchise, are held to be expedients 
scarcely less ' radical,' — in an offensive sense of the word, 
— than propositions for the reconstruction of the second 
Chamber on some other basis than that of hereditary 
descent. 

The customary defence, indeed, of these institu- 
tions is not a sound one, and when keenly scrutinised, 
falls to the ground. It is that the House of Commons is 
pre-eminently an instrument for the representation in the 
Legislature of distinct interests ; and that, on an equal 
distribution of electoral rights, the claims of property, 
and especially of landed property, would be insufficiently 
protected, there being always more poor than rich, and 
the richest members of the community being an ex- 
ceedingly small and much scattered class. It might be 
replied to this that, in the most democratically organised 
communities, such as the United States and New South 
Wales, where wealth, as such, has little or none of 
the special constitutional protection accorded to it in 
England, the felt difficulty is how to restrict, and not 
how to guard, its proper influence. The rich always 
and everywhere possess opportunities of exercising 
an amount of direct and indirect, honest and corrupt, 
influence throughout the country, which, in their aggre- 
gate, form one of the most obdurate of the forces which 
Government has to bring under efficient control in the 
interests of all. 

The power of economic combination is of itself a 



RErEESENTATlON OE WEALTH. 205 

weighty factor in politics, and tlie class of employers 
and of capitalists, especially when rightly organised for 
industrial co-operation, have, and can exercise, this 
power in a silent and unobserved fashion which more 
effectually protects their interests than any dii'ect legis- 
lation could do. 

As to the landholding class, their local weight must 
always preponderate out of all proportion to their 
numbers, and, in fact, what with the personal influence, 
the social authority, and the effectual power of this 
class in the economic hierarchy, the value of the direct 
votes of its individual members might be a matter of 
comparative insignificance. Nevertheless the unity of 
sentiment, of manners, and of pecuniary interest, which 
belongs to the ownership of land will always give an 
integral solidity to the votes of the proprietary class to 
which scarcely any other class can aspire ; and this is 
the firmest of all guarantees for the due security of the 
interests of wealth. 

The argument, then, that wealth needs special 
representation in the Legislature must not only be 
dismissed as founded on a perverse distortion of the 
facts of the case, but must be regarded as pernicious, 
inasmuch as it reverses the true reasoning applicable to 
the subject. If interests have to be directly represented 
in the Legislature, it is surely not that class of interests 
which are secure of the most uniform indirect and covert 
representation. It is not the socially and industrially 
organised classes who are in danger of being in- 
sufficiently heard and protected, but the vast masses of 
the population which — from their numbers, the variety 
of their occupations, their indigence, and their ob- 
scurity, — will never be heard at all, if special consti- 
10 



206 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

tutional provision is not made for tliem, — except at 
such moments as those of the outbreak of the French 
Eevolntion and of the Kevolutions of 1848. 

Bnt another error has crept into this reasoning in 
favour of specially and most effectually representing 
that which is always the strongest, — and indeed is 
strong without direct representation at all^ — based upon 
a misapprehension of what is meant by an ' interest.' 

Surely every member of the State, worthy of the 
name of man or woman, is concerned with the good 
government of the country for i^r other reasons than 
for the mere protection of his property or of his in- 
dnstrial or commercial gains. In the straggle between 
the classes severally personating the claims of capital 
and of labour, it is of importance to the parties on 
either side that the laws, and the execution of the laws, 
affecting their fortunes should be reasonable and just ; 
and for this end the legislator must be thoroughly in- 
formed of the issues at stake and of the probable effect 
of any legislation he contemplates. The administrator 
of the law must likewise have opportunities of knowing 
intimately where the law presses and when, and where 
and to what extent its execution should be enforced or 
relaxed. But all these considerations rest upon plain 
and easily cognisable matters of fact. 

There is no greater difficulty in finding out what 
are the precise rival interests affected by a Land Act, 
a Bank Charter Act, or a Currency Act than there is 
of discovering, — as is done by a Select Committee of 
the House of Commons, — what are the precise interests 
likely to be prejudiced by the construction of a new 
line of Railway or by the Amalgamation of two Rail- 
way Companies. To the extent that interests are real 



MONETARY INTERESTS. 207 

and definite, — and therefore as some say deserving of 
special representation, — they are likewise definite, and 
really, if not always numerically, computable, and can 
be thoroughly guarded without any direct representa- 
tion at all. 

If it be said that it may be true that these monetary 
interests may be understood through the machinery of 
oral witnesses and documentary proofs, but will only 
secure proper attention through the sort of political 
pressure exercised by special representatives, then the 
question arises as to the composition of the Legislative 
Chamber itself. 

On this theory each class of distinct pecuniary in- 
terest must be adequately defended by special delegates, 
and the Chamber as a whole must reflect all the classes 
of interests which are forcible and conspicuous enough, 
and yet not too numerous and intricate, to secure a 
place. Bat, to revert to what was said above, these 
limited and ascertainable interests are, at the most, only 
a small, and by no means important, portion of the in- 
terests affected by legislation. They are more calculated 
to attract attention than other interests only because of 
the distinctness in which the outward incidents of pro- 
perty and of industrial intercourse stand out on the 
platform of human afiFairs. Every one can appreciate 
their value according (it may be) to a standard of his 
own, and the rivalries to which the} give rise proceed 
in the eyes of all men, and without cessation or pause. 

With respect to other interests, however, they are 
noticed by the mass of mankind only at such moments 
as novel questions arise having relation to them. They 
occupy, indeed, too large a space in individual and in 
political life to attract to themselves a special and 



208 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

concentrated attention wliicli would be proportioned 
to their magnitude. They fill the canvas, and conse- 
quently the eye cannot estimate their real and com- 
parative worth and significance. 

It may be, indeed, that owing to a specific event, 
such as the threat of war, the tale of inhuman atrocities 
committed in a foreign land, a criminal trial, a gross 
administrative abuse, or a scandalous commercial fraud, 
public attention is roused, and the interests of public 
morality and of national right and duty are recognised 
as supreme. The public conscience is stirred to its 
depths, and (as happens from time to time especially 
in America and in France) a portion of the community 
usually reluctant to intervene in Politics comes to the 
front and determines to make itself heard. But the 
interval of such spasmodic zeal is shortlived, and when 
the evil has been redressed, the diplomatic course 
altered, the national character vindicated, the claims 
of the mighty interests for the time in jeopardy are 
forofotten or at least subordinated to the unrestinof 
calls presented by the clash of commonplace economical 
competition. 

It may thus be expected that in what may be called 
quiet times, — that is, in ordinary times, — the claims of 
property, of commerce, and of fragmentary portions of 
the community will exercise an influence over elections 
wholly disproportionate both to their actual importance 
and to their effective weight at any momentary crisis 
when the community has its political sentiments 
strongly and deeply stirred. 

It may be expected that the progress of the equali- 
sation of electoral rights, as above described, will operate 
in favour of diffusing more broadly and evenly at all 



PAKTY IN THE UNITED STATES. 209 

times the genuine political sentiments on the strength 
and correctness of which the State must rely at the most 
critical moments. The limited field of Athenian demo- 
cracy, so far as the precedent is applicable in the modern 
world, certainly seems to prove that the equalisation of 
rights of intervention in government may elevate rather 
than depress the habitual character of political action. 

It might be said, on a superficial view, that the ex- 
perience of the United States is the opposite to this, 
and that the equal diffusion of electoral riglits has been 
attended by a steady depreciation of political character 
and energy. But the truth is that the United Sta^tes are 
only beginning to grapple practically and seriously with 
the very constitutional problem the elements of which 
it is the object of the present discussion to examine. 
The rapid political and constitutional movements, pre- 
cipitated by economical and physical expansion, have 
forced the almost insuperable difficulties of the case 
into premature prominence. 

So far as an indication of ultimate success in 
adapting the Constitution to the demands of a state 
of society based on an absolute equality of electoral 
power can be gathered from casual experience at 
critical epochs, the united energy of the nation in 
maintaining the Union, in re-organising the Slave 
States, in defraying the expenses of the Secession War, 
and in grappling with the scandals of administrative 
corruption, affords a rich promise for the future. The 
Republic of the United States can only be said to have 
failed when the bulk of the nation shall have indolently 
acquiesced in the vices and flaws of its government, 
when it has ceased to struggle, to reconstruct, to hoi^e, 
and to believe. 



210 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

It is plain then how superficial and inadequate is the 
view of a Legislative Chamber which supposes that the 
mere representation of a limited number of ascertain- 
able material interests within its walls can ever be its 
final form. It is found, on reflection, that it only 
comes from national lethargy and inadvertence that 
these limited classes of interests are forced, in ordinary 
times, into political prominence; and that as soon as 
ever the public conscience and the educated instincts 
of the people are appealed to, those classes of interests 
become as nothing in the appreciating scale, and, in 
place of them, there instantly come to the surface con- 
siderations based on the claims of national right and 
obligation, of posterity, and of the more unprotected 
portions of the population, of religion (not of a purely 
denominational sort), of education, and of abstract 
morality. 

It is to be remembered too that the tendency of free 
institutions and of the equalisation of political power is 
to impart substance and cohesiveness to this general 
OTder of ideas as dominating in the popular conscious- 
ness. An untrammelled press, security against police 
despotism, an unrestricted right of orderly public 
meeting, and ungrudged opportunities for the an- 
nouncement of wishes and opinions in an organised 
form to the heads of Government Departments, all 
operate in one and the same direction of calling into 
mature existence political conceptions and instincts 
of the highest order, which, in default of these popular 
agencies, might remain embryonic or be starved out of 
life. 

Yet it is just this order of ideas which, even 
though often false, uninformed, or imperfect, need to 



PraNCIPLES OF EEPEESENTATION. 211 

be brouglit into direct competition with tlic strong and 
purely material interests which are pretty sure to hold 
their own, whatever be the constitution of the Legis- 
lative Chamber. Industrial co-operation and the ex- 
tension of centralised administrative work must be 
expected to increase rather than to diminish. But 
this involves the creation of compact political interests 
of a highly organised kind. The railway interest, the 
interest of large ship-owners, the interest of bankers, 
the interest of municipal corporations as such, the 
interest of the Army, of the Police, and, in many 
countries, of voluntary Churches, are likely to become 
more, and not less, effectually defended as time goes 
on. The only counterpoise to them will be found to 
be the general recognition of the truth that every 
member of the community has a concern in the de- 
velopment of its moral life far exceeding in magnitude 
and value that which he or another may chance to 
have in any enterprise capable of being counted, 
measured, or weighed. 

The apprehension of this position is not here a 
subject of recommendation, which would be outside 
the purpose of this treatise. It is stated as about to 
become a political axiom which must be taken into 
account in all constitutional constructions based on the 
conditions of modern society. The direct representation 
of monetary interests must become less and less pro- 
minent or possible, while the representation of the class 
of ideas which are capable of commending themselves 
to innumerable persons at once will become more and 
more so. 

Admitting, then, these conditions, the question re- 
turns as to what are the only possible modes of repro- 



212 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

ducing adequately in a Legislative Chamber the true 
spirit and will of the people in their various manifesta- 
tious, consistently with maintaining a due amount of 
energy and continuity in the Executive Authority. 

In England, at the present day, a considerable 
amount of variety in the composition of the Legisla- 
ture, corresponding with broadly marked differences of 
opinion in the country, is secured by the distribution, 
on a definite principle, of the seats between the towns 
and the counties. This distribution is due at the out- 
set to purely historical causes, though it has been, 
within recent years, consolidated and improved in pur- 
suit of distinct political ends. 

The permanence of the lines drawn between town 
and country representation cannot be relied upon as an 
essential factor in the constitution of a Modern State. 
The facilities of locomotion make the transit between 
town and country so rapid and easy that the town 
population is increasingly acquiring habits of working 
in the town and sleeping at several miles distance in 
the country. One portion of a family occupies the 
country house or villa or lodging and the other portion 
spends the working hours of the day in town and passes 
to and fro at night and morning. Thus the interests, 
sentiments and habits of town and country residents 
respectively become less and less separable. 

In the meantime purely economical causes, such as 
the growth of population, the depreciation of agricul- 
tural profits, and the indispensable necessity of applying 
larger amounts of capital and on a more extended scale, 
if profitable cultivation is the object, are assimilating 
country labour to the highly organised labour hitherto 
only witnessed in large manufacturing towns. Further- 



BEPKESENTATION OF TOWNS. 213 

more, new towns, especially in America and tae great 
British Colonies, keep springing into existence with 
unexampled rapidity, according as the discovery of a 
new mine, or the opening out by a railway of new 
markets, pastoral districts, or commercial centres, call 
for them. 

The inhabitants of these new towns have none of 
the fixity of ideas, or traditional associations, or heredi- 
tary attachments, which go so far to give political 
coherence to the citizens of the older towns, while 
the migratory disposition which, in fact, gave birth 
to the new settlement, imparts to them a character- 
istic temper which distinguishes them alike from the 
dwellers in a rural village and from the freemen of 
an ancient borough. 

Besides this, another compensating tendency is de- 
stroying civic life as a political factor altogether. The 
facilities for locomotion acting within a narrower range, 
and the more diffused and correct appreciation of the 
laws of health, as well as the improvement of towns from 
the point of view of artistic beauty and architectural 
convenience, combine to render the suburb of a town, 
as a political element, more important than the town 
itself. Even where the railway is not resorted to for 
the purpose of nocturnal flight into the country pro- 
perly so called, the practice of sleeping and conducting 
family existence on the outskirts of the town, and not 
in its centre, is become more and more habitual. That, 
too, which is the luxury of the well-to-do clerk or 
tradesman is become the necessity of the skilled and 
unskilled artisan. 

Every internal improvement which broadens streets, 
erects commodious warehouses, central railway stations. 



214 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

exchanges, town-halls, and places of amusement, and 
claims space for squares, public gardens and parks, 
drives the labourer and his family to find a home at an 
increasing distance from his work. The street-tramway 
and the early 'workman's' train adapt themselves to 
the new exigencies, and the result is that the outskirts 
of every great town are fringed with remote suburbs 
the reverse of ' fashionable,' which by the simplicity, — 
not to say the occasional squalor, — of the erections, 
merge into the common surroundings of the agri- 
cultural labourer. 

It is evident then that every fresh economic im- 
pulse tends to obliterate that sharp distinction between 
town and country which could alone be a continuing 
basis of fixed differences in political representation. 
No doubt it will always be the case that the person 
whose life is most thrown with that of his fellows, who 
is best trained in habits of co-operation and in the 
culture of sympathetic emotions, who has the truest 
sense of the continuity of corporate existence and of 
the corresponding responsibilities, and who is the most 
familiar with the economical conditions, as exhibited 
on a clear and wide platform, on which all civilised 
society and therefore all government ultimately rests, 
starts with a political education to which the isolated 
dweller or worker amidst purely rural scenes can make 
no pretension, and for which no book study or desultory 
social intercourse can make compensation. 

It is for this reason that the great reforms and 
beneficial revolutions in such feudalised countries as 
England, France and Germany may be traced back to 
the indestructible political instinct which has often had 
its sole refuge in the casually protected corporations 



TOWN AND COUNTEY KEPKESENTATION. 215 

of the great towns ; and that, even at this date, the 
characteristic political sentiment of the dwellers in the 
great towns of these countries is one favourable to 
indefinite political improvement rather than, as in 
country places, to the mere maintenance of existing 
institutions and the preservation of order. 

It has been seen, however, that this clear opposition 
of sentiments, which may be regarded as salutary where 
it does not result in stagnation, cannot be treated as a 
permanent phenomenon. Even where the political 
characteristics of town and country life are on the 
whole maintained, the gradations of sentiment brought 
about by incessant motion to and fro, by migrations, 
and by the indefinite extension of the area of town life 
into the country, are becoming so numerous and fine 
that the distinction itself is becoming antiquated for 
purposes of Parliamentary representation, and will 
shortly be worthless in the more advanced countries. 

If once the distinction of town and country becomes 
no longer recognisable as one of the bases of the dis- 
tribution of seats, it cannot be long before an end is 
put to all the less startling inequalities in the electoral 
franchise. The extent of electoral areas has been 
determined not only by population but b}^ merely acci- 
dental, local, or traditional claims to special repre- 
sentation. It may thus be expected that within a 
period not too remote for political prevision, in every 
country in which representative institutions are the 
foundation of the Government, no other principle of 
distributing votes and seats will be tolerated than that 
which makes every person — not disqualified by age, 
disease, or crime, — a voter, and every person's vote of 



216 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

exactly equal weight as affecting the composition of 
the Legislature. 

A difficulty, however, is here encountered the ele- 
ments of which must be examined with some care, 
because of its bearing on some political problems 
already adverted to and larger than itself. Though 
every person's vote may presumably be of equal weight, 
yet there are various modes of adjusting the machinery 
of voting by which on occasion the effective value of 
each vote may be disproportionately increased. 

The current electoral practice in England is an 
illustration of this. The electoral areas in England 
(excepting the Universities) are a county, — or divisions 
of a county, — and a borough, — or (as in the case of 
London) divisions of a borough. One, two, or three 
members are apportioned to each electoral area ; and — 
except in a very limited number of constituencies ten- 
tatively submitted to a different system, — every voter 
has as many votes as there are members to be elected, 
and he can use as many or as few of his votes as he 
pleases. Thus when a party issue or other clearly com- 
prehended and sufficiently interesting question is clearly 
propounded to a constituency at the time of an election, 
the majority of the voters who are of accord on this 
issue or question necessarily carry all the seats, and the 
minority are, so far as this area is concerned, wholly 
unrepresented. 

The misfortune is that as it usually happens that 
one question at a time occupies public attention and 
depresses all other questions, the accidental distri- 
bution of opinion on this single question at the moment 
of election determines the constitution of the repre- 
sentative Chamber so long as the Parliament lasts. 



SIIOET AND LONG PARLIAMENTS. 217 

wliile the people may be wholly unrepresented on all 
other questions, and the aggregate of minorities 
throughout the country are unrepresented on this 
question also. In fact, for the duration of the Parlia- 
ment, on all questions but the one which predominated 
at the moment of the General Election, the will of the 
Parliamentary representatives is substituted for the 
will of the people, and on all questions whatever the 
will of the minorities is unrepresented. 

The only practical correctives to this state of things 
are found in the inevitable competition of other ques- 
tions with the prominent one ; in the confidence re- 
posed in individual candidates independently of their 
specific views at a given moment ; and in the necessity 
that members desirous of re-election should defer, in 
their Parliamentary conduct, to the sentiments pre- 
vailing in their several constituencies. This last con- 
sideration operates most forcibly when Parliaments are 
elected for the shortest periods, and, naturally, with 
more force towards the close of a Parliament than in 
its early days. 

Many schemes have been devised and partially 
resorted to in England, and in other countries, in order 
to bring a greater portion of the true popular will to 
bear upon Governments purporting to be representative, 
and to enable this will to operate at a greater number 
of points. 

Shorter parliaments have been always one of the de- 
mands of an extreme democratic party when in pursuit 
of more complete and continuous popular representa- 
tion. Long Parliaments have different disadvantages 
according to the modes in which they come to an end. 
One disadvantage is that of gradually substituting for 



218 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the popular voice an adventitious, and yet highly 
organised, opinion generated from within by the con- 
ditions of co-operation peculiar to the Assembly itself. 
Another may be that of artificially proloaiging the 
duration of an Assembly proved to contain elements 
too recalcitrant and irreconcilable to sustain the in- 
terests of order and progress. A third may be that of 
putting in the hands of the members of the Executive 
Authority an arbitrary right of dissolution which may 
be resorted to, not in the public interests, but simply in 
order to maintain themselves in oflGlce. But, on the other 
hand, too short Parliaments prevent the formation of 
habits of Government; favour an undue reference, at 
critical moments, to transitory waves of opinion and 
sentiment outside the House ; maintain ceaseless agita- 
tion and excitement in the country ; and impede the con- 
struction of a strong and lasting Executive Authority. 
Some, of each of these opposite disadvantages may 
no doubt be avoided by the American system of re- 
electing a third (or some other considerable fraction) 
of the whole House at short fixed intervals so as to 
ensure that within a brief, but not too brief, period, — as 
for instance six years, — the whole House be re-elected. 
But this system bears, like so much else in the 
American Constitution, the signs of nervous apprehen- 
sion of democratic dangers, and thereby loses some 
of the characteristic advantages of a true popular con- 
stitution. There is the want of perpetual opportunity 
for a full exhibition of the public sentiment ; and 
therefore there is always a sense that there can be 
no real and permanent unity in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, but that one portion or another will find 
support in the Senate or from the President, each of 



REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES. 210 

which departments is elected on different principles 
from the rest of the Legislature. The public mind is, 
at the most critical junctures, curbed and chained by 
the Constitution, and the result is that it expresses 
itself with most freedom on the occasion of the election 
of the President, who becomes, as soon as he assumes 
office, the most conservative and irresponsible element 
in the Government. 

The solution of the problem of popular representation 
which has obtained most favour in England of late years, 
and has been, to some extent, put in practice, is that of 
the direct representation of minorities. In the actual 
schemes which have been propounded, the subject has 
usually been implicated with others, such as local repre- 
sentation and the machinery for expeditiously taking 
the votes, which are only indirectly connected with it, 
though of great importance in themselves. It is ex- 
pedient, however, in pronouncing on the value of this 
solution of the problem, to reduce tJie mode proposed 
to its simplest elements. 

At some point or other both inside the Legislative 
Assembly and outside it, it is obvious that, in case of 
final difference of opinion, the opinions of the more 
numerous must practically prevail over those of the 
less numerous ; not by any means because the more 
numerous are more likely to have right on their side, 
but because a decision of any sort is better than no 
decision at all ; and if the superior physical force wielded 
by the stronger is no longer the means of decision, the 
bare collected opinions of those who might otherwise 
wield the force form the natural and only available 
substitute. It is true that the very notion of force is 
forgotten or exploded, and the mere allusion to it savours 



220 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

of a deference to mob law. But, historically speaking, 
there can be no doubt that the practice of deferring to 
a majority is simply that of giving way, in time and by 
decent ceremonial, to those who could have their own 
way if they chose to take it. 

The solution of merely counting the votes, and 
acting in the direction to which the greater number 
of votes incline, is rough at the best, and the only 
apology for persisting in its use, in a civilised con- 
dition of society, is that when action must be taken 
and the individual votes of the persons in whose name 
it is taken are presumably of equal value, the test of 
mere plurality is the only imaginable test to abide by. 
It has at least the advantage that it seems plausible, 
because, to the superficial observer, the greater the 
number of people who assent to a proposition, the more 
likely is that proposition to be true. In the common 
matters of life, which rest chiefly on wide experience 
easily obtained, the mere multiplication of witnesses gives 
credit to a statement or persuasion in which they all 
concur. In these matters exceptional views are, at least, 
as likely to be signs of mere eccentricity as of genius. 
But, in proportion as the question rises out of the region 
accessible to common experience ; as it involves strict 
logic for its treatment ; demands the casting aside of 
prejudices due to habit and a narrow experience ; and 
calls for moral as well as mental equilibrium and intro- 
spection ; it is the few rather than the many who are 
most likely to give a true reply to it. 

No doubt, between the common problems of daily 
life on which the opinion of one average person is 
likely to be as good as that of another, and the ques- 
tions requiring special knowledge, thoughtfulness, or 



MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES. 221 

moral culture, there are a class of questions which 
only come to the surface at moments of political emer- 
gency, — especially wlieu some moral sentiment is in- 
volved or believed to be involved. On such occasions 
the conscience of the people as a corporate community 
may be stirred to its depths. All the ordinary ties 
and associations of habit are snapped asunder. The 
heart of the peoj^le is moved as the heart of one man, 
and, either with the frenzy of fanaticism or the judicial 
resolution of an intelligent patriotism, the large mass 
of the community thinks and feels together with hardly 
noticeable dissent. 

It is seasons such as these which generate national 
crimes or occasion acts of heroic magnanimity which 
illustrate to all time the possibility of corporate virtue. 
It was such a vox popitli which, by supporting the 
unwavering energy of the Eoman Senate, steadied the 
nation after the defeat of Cannae* It was the same 
voice which vindicated the cause of the Sevon Bishops 
and, by anticipation, stamped the English Revolution 
of 1688 with popularity. It was, too, the same voice 
which accredited in France the military encroach- 
ments at home and abroad of the two Napoleons, and 
which has since again and again emphasised its 
acceptance of the Eepublic. It is the same voice 
which at one epoch, supported in England the Chinese 
aggressions of Lord Palmerston against the condem- 
nations proceeding from both Houses of Parliament, 
and which, thirty years afterwards, accepted with tu- 
multuous approbation the counter policy of Mr. Glad- 
stone avowedly based on the principle that England 
must peremptorily abstain from encroachment on her 
weaker neighbours. 



222 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Such examples as these prove that, even when the 
public mind of a nation is so far shifted from its common 
moorings as to act with abnormal activity and concentra- 
tion it is dependent, to a perilous extent, on the sort 
of personal influences which are brought to bear on it. 
The Eoman Senate, the two Napoleons, M. Gambetta, 
Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Gladstone, — not to dwell on 
the more common instances of popularly exerted power 
which are spread over the history of Greece, of the 
Italian Republics, and of the United States, — severally 
exercised, at great national crises, an amount of wide- 
spread popular influence w^hich for a time, or in some 
cases for years together, imparted a marked and uniform 
consistency to the policy of the country. 

It is the object of a Constitution so to settle the 
framework of the State in harmony with the true and 
permanent national spirit of the country, created by 
its history and by the growth of all its institutions, 
that no casual political accident, wave of feeling, or 
momentary personal influence, shall have a dispropor- 
tionate weight among the forces which affect the public 
mind. It has been seen that in ordinary times and 
in respect to the commoner topics of life, a majority 
of persons are more likely to be in the right than a 
minority. In similar times, as to matters requiring 
special thought and knowledge or specially cultivated 
sentiment, a minority is at least as likely to be in the 
right as a majority, and a properly selected minority 
more likely to be in the right. In times of a critical 
and exceptional kind the majority may be right or 
may be wrong, but is at all events likely to be 
overwhelming in numbers and irresistible in au- 
thority. 



MINORITY EEPRESENTATION. 223 

Assuming then that the constitutional machinery 
must harmonise with, and give effect to, the political 
preponderance of numerical majorities, it still remains 
to be settled at what j^oint of time or of sequence in the 
process of election and legislation the mere weight of 
counted numbers, and of this alone, is to tell. Suppose, 
in the simplest case of all, that a single member has to 
be elected by the electors dwelling in a definitely cir- 
cumscribed electoral area. There may be several candi- 
dates, of whom the one who obtains the greatest number 
of votes is chosen. All the electors who have voted for 
any other candidates than the one who has the ma.iority 
of votes are unrepresented in Parliament altogether. 
Suppose the case to be the same in any number of similar 
areas. If these unrepresented minorities are added 
together throughout the country, they may largely out- 
number the sum of many of the majorities which are 
represented. 

Therefore, because the separation between the ma- 
jority and the minority is made at the first moment, 
is irreparable, and is made for every member elected, 
the aggregate effect is that, on a vast variety of topics, 
and in respect of the competing claims of a vast number 
of candidates, the number of represented persons may 
be exceeded by that of those whose votes prove good 
for nothing. The latter are in fact, for many purposes, 
and when added together, the majority. For instance, 
if a particular candidate were nominated for a dozen 
constituencies at once, and only failed of election by 
a single vote, as against different successful candidates 
in each constituency, the aggregate majority in his 
favour throughout these dozen constituencies would 
be overwhelming, and yet he would not be elected, and 



224 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the votes of his supporters in each constituencj'^ would 
be tlirown away. 

It is with the utilisation of these votes, so thrown 
away, that Mr. Hare, Mr. Mill, and a variety of Con- 
tinental writers have occupied themselves in their 
schemes for what is sometimes called the Representa- 
tion of Minorities, and sometimes Personal or Propor- 
tional Eepresentation. 

The most popular of these schemes provides that 
each voter may furnish to the returning officer a list of 
persons, either selected at pleasure or out of a list of 
candidates previously prepared, arranged in the order 
in which he wishes each of his votes to be turned to 
account. There is a fixed minimum of votes, — based on 
the proportion between the number of members to be 
elected and the number of electors in the electoral area, 
— needed to secure the election of any member whatever. 
So soon as, in counting up the votes, it appears that 
any member has received a sufficient number of votes to 
secure his election, all other votes given for him are 
cancelled, and the votes so given are applied in favour 
of other candidates, according to the order of pre- 
ference in which they appear on the voters' lists. 
The operation of cancelling and substitution is re- 
peated with each return of a member till the whole 
number of members are elected in the area, which 
may be as large as the area of present constituencies, 
or larger, or, indeed, coextensive with all the existing 
constituencies. The mere size of the constituencies is 
not of the essence of the scheme propounded, though it 
is an important element in estimating its value. 

The writers who have advocated this scheme have 
laboured to show that the mechanical difficulties of 



SCHEMES OF MINORITY EEPEESENTATION. 225 

counting the votes with rapidity could be got over, 
and that it would become as familiar and as thoroughly 
understood as voting by simple majorities. One ob- 
vious objection to it is that, to make it of real ad- 
vantage to voters, the area must be sufficiently large 
to secure a large choice of candidates. The smaller the 
area, the smaller the number of members for that area, 
and the fevs^er the names v^hich will appear on a voter's 
list with any hope of the alternative votes being turned 
to account. The larger the area, the greater chance 
that a no.me, though first on no list, will yet re-appear 
on a great number and so secure election, rather by 
diffused than by intense popularity. In this way the 
finer shades of political opinion will secure a greater 
chance of representation. But, according as the area is 
extended in this way, the notion of local connexion 
between a member and his constituency becomes ob-. 
literated. This not only implies a vital alteration in 
the Constitution of most existing States, but involves 
a loss of some political elements which could ill be 
spared. 

The connexion between a member and a definite 
constituency has undoubtedly some disadvantages which 
are reaped to the full when, as in the United States, and 
some British Colonies, the places represented are very 
far apart and have very diverse interests, and when the 
sense of corporate national responsibility is not always 
strong enough to overcome the centrifugal tendency 
thereby created. But, on the other hand, it is scarcely 
possible to overrate the benefit accruing from multi- 
plying sub-centres of Governmental responsibility. To 
bring a definite portion of the population, already 
welded together by geographical situation, hereditary 



226 THE SCIENCE OP POLITICS. 

antecedents, and current mutual dependence, into a 
close and constant connexion with the central Govern- 
ment must be a primarj^ object of the Statesman's soli- 
citude. This definite connexion with the central 
Legislature is at once the necessary supplement and 
the best corrective of local Government. The fact that, 
in some countries, it degenerates into a system rife with 
opportunities for corrupt self-seeking is one of those 
morbid phenomena which, while they call for the political 
physician, are no imputation on the general worth of the 
life they impair. Mere universal popularity over a large 
area, as was shown by the plebiscites which returned 
again and again Napoleon III., is often but a superficial 
indication of true personpJ merit; and though, under 
such a system of alternative voting as that described 
above, the mere force of notoriety would be largely cor- 
rected by the return of the nominees of accumulated 
small minorities, yet here again the want of connexion 
among the voters would rather favour the representation 
of worthless crotchets than of deep-rooted and wide 
scattered, though unobtrusive, political convictions. The 
personal relationship between a member and his con- 
stituency has been often made, and is capable of being 
made still more, the occasion of the finest species of 
political training for the people. In his speeches and 
addresses to the electors of Bristol Edmund Burke well 
explained the limits within which he held a mere local 
subserviency to be confined. 

The English practice of autumnal speeches ad- 
dressed by members of Parliament to their consti- 
tuencies, followed by questions and varied forms of 
social intercourse, ought not to be omitted in taking 
account of the less direct machinery by which the 



SCHEMES OF MINORITY REPRESENTATION. 227 

claims of different parts of the country are reconciled 
with its claims as an integral unity. 

Other less complete schemes of minority representa- 
tion have been suggested, and to some extent put in 
practice, but none of them occasion the loss of so few 
votes as that just explained. The method of election 
of Euglish School-Boards, according to which each 
elector in an electoral area has as many votes as there 
are members to be elected for that area, and can dis- 
tribute them among the nominated candidates, or Avitb- 
hold them altogether, or accumulate them in favour of 
one or more, certainly secures the representation of can- 
didates distinctly representing well marked minorities. 
Thus in some parts of the country it often happens that 
a Eoman Catholic, Nonconformist, or woman candidate, 
is at the head of the poll, not because more persons vote 
for them, but because those who do vote for them give 
them all their votes and vote for no one else. 

Another mode, in use in what are called in England 
the ' three-cornered constituencies,' is to allow voters to 
have votes numbering one fewer than the number of 
members to be elected, so that if there are three members 
to be elected the probability is that the majority of the 
constituency succeed in returning two out of the three 
and the minority the third. In these constituencies it 
is always the object of the majority, by economising 
their votes, to secure the return of all their candidates. 
But this is difficult ; and they are usually defeated where 
the sides are clearly marked and the majority is not 
overwhelming. 

The representation of a clearly marked minority of 
this kind in a single constituency is logically unsatis- 
factory because it proceeds on an assumed numerical 



228 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

distribution of opinions througliout the country which 
probably at no moment represents a real distribution 
of opinion. If such constituencies existed all over 
the country, the result might be an Assembly of 
"vvhich exactly two-thirds were attached to one political 
party, — the dominant one in the country at the day, — 
and the remaining third was attached partly to the 
direct oj)ponents of the former and partly to an in- 
definite number of strongly organised but politically 
insignificant coteries. 

Though a House of this composition presents the 
appearance of arithmetical fairness, yet the very sharp- 
ness of the line separating the different classes of mem- 
bers is unfavourable to unity and to legislative homo- 
geneity. It is one thing for a deliberative Chamber 
to come together, as formed of personal elements having 
a history which recalls on a smaller scale the actual 
lines of demarcation which broadly separate political 
parties and opinions in the country at large. It is 
another thing to attempt to reproduce, in exact numeri- 
cal proportions, the quantity of opinion on one side 
or another arbitrarily presumed to exist outside. In 
the one case, the sense of political responsibility, 
the mere fact and habit of companionship, and the 
necessities of co-operation, all tend to develope a unity 
of purpose and action which is quite consistent with 
the broad and sharp opposition, at proper moments, 
of party policy. In the other case the Members for the 
same constituency bring with them into the House the 
deep-rooted oppositions of sentiment which prevailed on 
the spot at which the election took place, and which were 
exacerbated and intensified by all the incidents of a 
sharply contested election. 



THE REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIEa 229 

If it be true, as lias been already admitted, tliat the 
mere economical distribution of society will, of itself, 
always maintain the existence of great political parties 
inclining in opposite directioiis, it is, furthermore, a true 
condition of healthy political existence that every means 
be exerted to render this fixed opposition as compatible 
as possible with the unity of State life. 

This unity can be best secured not only by soften- 
ing, in all forms of social intercourse and in Par- 
liamentary manners, the asperities of party spirit, but 
by preventing hard party lines being drawn in the 
ordinary working of the Constitution. Party divisions, 
even where they connote true and deep differences of 
interests and sentiment, should be made as casual and 
evanescent as possible in their formal expression. They 
should instantly disappear before the solvent of a 
national call which appeals to that which is deeper and 
more permanent than themselves, and the utmost oppor- 
tunity should be afforded for the frequent subordina- 
tion of them to personal or other claims of a different 
kind. 

On all these grounds, it seems undesirable, — that is, 
in other words, incompatible with the highest principles 
of popular government as already enunciated, — that 
minorities should be so represented as to reproduce 
with microscopic precision the unstable divisions of 
political feeling stereotyped at the moment of a 
general election. The claims for the representation of 
minorities are not properly based on the notion that 
the less popular opinions outside the House should be 
entitled, through their concentration in a narrow field, 
to tell with reduplicated force in the actual performance 
of the task of Legislation and Government. 
11 



230 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

These claims really rest on the fact that, according 
to the recognised methods of counting only the majority- 
vote in each electoral area, the country is not polled at 
all in respect to a vast number of questions. Such 
questions are those which, either owing to the special 
circumstances of the country at the moment of the 
election or to the necessity of choosing candidates 
likely to command general confidence, are inevitably 
treated, at that moment only, as secondary questions. 
Thus the complaint is that the majority-vote only 
accidentally represents, even in form, a majority. It 
may happen that the number of aggregate minorities 
throughout the country would, on some other question 
than that temporarily uppermost, coalesce with a suffi- 
cient number of those now opposed to them to form 
a majority still greater than that now dominant. 

Thus a really adequate representation of even a 
majority of the electors would mean the representation 
of all the majorities which would be obtained by taking 
the votes successively on a large variety of urgent 
politi'^-al questions, capable of being propounded in a 
clear shape to persons not specially instructed. 

It is customary in ^ election addresses ' for candidates 
to announce their views on a series of questions which 
they consider urgent or interesting to the constituency 
at the moment, and to arrange them in the order of 
the importance they attach to them. It depends on 
the quality of the party divisions at the time whether 
a number of such questions hang together and can be 
treated in the lump as a portion of the party pro- 
gramme, or whether significance attaches to only one or 
only a few of them. Thus each elector, in comparing 
the claims of candidates to his vote, may have to de- 



THE REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES. 231 

teriniiie whether he shall make the party question 
prevail in his mind over all the otliers, or whether, — 
— through indifference to party claims, through personal 
predilection for a particular candidate, or through 
superior concern in other questions in which a can- 
didate would represent him more closely than he does 
on the party question, — he will refuse to be bound 
merely by his party ties. 

As it may be assumed, by the very hypothesis, that 
the dominant question of the moment will most interest 
most electors, there are strong inducements for an elector 
to subordinate his concern in all other questions, and 
even in the personality of the candidate, in order to make 
his vote tell at all. In this way a certain violence is 
done to freedom ; and this is especially true when a 
Minister dissolves the House suddenly on a question 
on which the country has concentrated its whole atten- 
tion for the moment, — as, for instance, that of his own 
retention of office or that of a foreign war. In these 
cases, all those electors who do not rate the dominant 
question at the same value as the average electors do 
are not only out- voted, but are never asked to vote at all 
on any subject but one. These disappointed electors 
are often more numerous than is supposed, because, as 
they find it worth while to vote on one side or the 
other rather than be temporarily disfranchised, their 
indisposition to sacrifice all their strong opinions to one 
opinion, which to them is almost colourless, never 
appears. 

It is obvious that such a scheme as that of naming 
alternative candidates, — worked with electoral areas 
large enough to secure a plentiful supply of varied can- 
didates and yet not so large as to lose the advantage of 



232 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICa 

a local connexion between a member and his consti- 
tuency, — would go some way to secure a representation 
of a far larger nvimber of the population on a far larger 
number of questions. This would be done without 
representing minorities, and so, perhaps, indurating and 
intensifying within the House the antipathies already 
more than sufficiently well marked outside it. 

Having ascertained the principles which determine 
how the people are to be represented, it remains to 
consider how far the efficiency of the representative 
Chamber itself and the conduct of Government are 
affected by the various modes of representation to 
which attention has just been drawn. 

Some part of this subject has been anticipated in the 
remarks which have been made on the aggravation of 
party-spirit within the House likely to be promoted by 
positively representing minorities as such. There is a 
cardinal objection to all modes of minority-representa- 
tion, even to those which have for their supreme object 
the most complete attainable representation of the 
majority of the electoral body on the largest number of 
separable topics. It is that the less uniform and nar- 
rowly confined are the political sentiments of members 
of the House, the more difficult does it become to secure 
promptness and decision in legislative action, and the 
more incalculable are the obstacles which, at unforeseen 
points, are likely to obstruct the path of the Executive 
Authority. Thus it is feared that, in a House repre- 
senting a breadth and diversity of opinion at all cor- 
responding to the multiform interests and tastes per- 
vading the community, debates would be indefinitely 
prolonged, party discipline would be slackened, and 



THE KEPKESENTATION OF MINORITIES. 233 

important measures would be carried by such insignifi- 
caut majorities that small and compact sections of the 
House would be able to make the whole policy of the 
country sway from side to side at their pleasure. 

This evil indeed is no imaginary one ; and it repre- 
sents, undoubtedly, the characteristic danger to which 
an assembly with a thoroughly popular constitution is 
always prone. It was, in spite of Mr. Grote's apologies 
(which are, in many respects, unanswerable), the main 
constitutional drawback to those popular bodies in 
Athens and in early Rome which not so much repre- 
sented as were constituted out of the citizen body. 

Mr. Grote has sufficiently shown that the Athenian 
people, assembled in their Ecclesia, were neither fickle 
nor unjust ; but on the contrary had attained the habit 
of listening patiently to arguments from all sides, and 
practised the self-restraint needed to re-consider again 
and again their determinations. But this very process 
of re-opening decided questions and of sustaining a 
condition of protracted doubt is not favourable to the 
rapid despatch of business or to the maintenance of 
an uniform policy. The widening area of Eoman 
Government, — which opened out an experience to 
which Athens had not time to attain, — rendered the 
concentration of the powers of Government in the 
hands of a homogeneous aristocratic Senate an essential 
condition of further political existence, though (as 
Professor Mommsen has fully proved) it was the cor- 
ruption and internal discord of this Senate which 
brought the Republic to the brink of ruin, from which 
it could only be saved by the institution of Imperial 
rule. 

In modern States the best hope for uniformity. 



234 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

strength, and stability in the executive Government 
need not be placed in the narrowness of the range of 
interests or questions to which representation is ex- 
tended. It may be expected that, according as the 
constitution is so modified as to admit of a more com- 
plete representation of every voter, — not in respect of 
one subject only but of many, — political activity v^ill be 
developed in the country at large. Already, in countries 
in which tolerably free institutions are found, the 
cheap daily and weekly Press has an extraordinary 
influence both in diffusing political information through 
the length and breadth of a land and in concentrating 
attention on questions which from moment to moment 
specially invite popular interference. 

This influence of the Press is emphasized by the 
large use of public meetings, the proceedings of wliich, — 
often aided by the presence of members of Parliament 
-or even of the Executive Government, — are again 
reported in the daily papers and are thus shared by 
innumerable persons in distant parts of the country. 
The result is that the subjects on which large classes 
of electors are simultaneously and sympathetically in- 
terested become not only more numerous but of a more 
exalted kind. Large associations are formed for the 
purpose of pressing on certain classes of measures in 
Parliament, and committees are formed for the pre- 
paration of draft bills and of taking counsel with Mem- 
bers in charge of them with a view to their being 
brought before the House in the most advantageous 
way. 

In this way, a great deal of work, which, in an 
earlier condition of society, would be performed within 
the walls of the House, — where perhaps would then 



THE KEPRESENTATION OF MINOrvITIES. 235 

be found the onl}" persons in the community competent 
for legishitive duties, — is done outside the Houses by 
interested, philanthropic, or patriotic persons availing 
themselves of all the modern advantages of a free press, 
and a free right of public meeting and of association. 
The advantage of legislative work prepared in this 
way is that it is done under conditions of unrestrained 
liberty, even to a greater extent than is possible in the 
House itself by Members acting under the eye of consti- 
tuents who may some day call them to account. 

Thus when a claim is made for a more complete 
representation by enabling wasted minority- votes to be 
in some measure utilised, the result of conceding the 
claim would not be, it may be fairly presumed, to fill 
the House with Members concerned only to advocate 
narrow and ill- digested crotchets, but to favour the 
discussion in the House of a far larger number of 
questions than at present, while presenting them in a 
form in which all the initial steps of fitting them for 
precise debate and prompt decision have been already 
taken. 

It cannot be a gain that a Legislative Chamber 
should be forced by its own constitution to ignore 
whole classes of important questions which are found 
to interest the people at large ; and it may well be 
expected that, in proportion as, under a more com- 
plete representative system, a larger range of subjects 
are brouorht under the effectual notice of the Lesfis- 
lature, the House wull not exhibit more instability and 
vacillation of purpose in dealing with them by a 
consistent policy than in dealing with the present 
narrower range. The previous work of elaboration per- 
formed outside the House, the aroused public interest, 



236 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

the publicity of all modern legislation, and the ever- 
widening public of educated political critics, all guaran- 
tee a representative House that will not allow itself 
to be brought into disrepute bj the caprices of small 
sections of its members, and that will exhibit a higher 
rather than a lower capacity of adhering to a steady 
and uniform policy. 

The subject of the superior advisability of having 
one or more Chambers is part of the general question 
how to secure all the benefits of the most complete 
popular representation without sacrificing any of the 
advantages supposed to belong peculiarly to Constitu- 
tions resting on less broad foundations. 

The subject must be distinguished at the outset 
from that of the discussion of the political value of 
the English House of Lords, though the two subjects 
are often confounded. 

The English House of Lords, in its modern shape, 
is an institution wholly sid generis^ of a character quite 
unprecedented, and one which never can be reproduced. 
It is by attempts to copy it or to imitate some of its 
characteristics, erroneously supposed to be the most 
essential ones, that modern States, — and more espe- 
cially the Australian Colonies, — have plunged them- 
selves into inextricable perplexities. The truth is that 
the House of Lords owes its distinguished constitutional 
position, and even efficacy in the face of every adverse 
popular criticism, to those very facts which cannot be 
transferred to another country and other circumstances. 
The House of Lords, being a scarcely less ancient part 
of the Constitution than the Monarchy itself, is so 
implicated in the rest of the Constitution that no 



THE UOUSE OF LOEDS. 237 

competent political reformer can think of simply ex- 
punging it or of radically altering it, without being 
prepared with an entire reconstruction of the most 
essential parts of the whole Legislative framework. 
The House of Lords, as an hereditary Chaniler, is, in 
fact, and still more in popular apprehension, a piotest 
in favour of that law of hereditary descent on which 
both the Monarchical succession and the institution of 
a titled Peerage is based. Furthermore, by occupying 
a situation intermediate, both in rank and in actual 
power, between the Crown and the representatives of 
the people, it maintains a hierarchical gradation of 
Governmental influence which obscures the otherwise 
too patent facts of the omnipotency of the people and 
the impotency of the Crown. But the maintenance cf 
such a post of resistance is only rendered possible by the 
fact of possession, — guaranteed, at least temporarily, by 
a sentimental indisposition to disturb a state of things 
having its roots in the far past. 

Lastly, the House of Lords is largely composed of 
powerful landholders, who, by family connexion, as well 
as by identity of interest, are in close relationship and 
sympathy with a large, if not a dominant, section of 
the House of Commons. Thus, in the ease of any 
conflict between the Houses, there are always found in 
each House a sufficient number of members who care 
still more for the maintenance of the existing character 
and of the mutual relations of the two Houses than 
they do for the point in dispute; and these persons, by 
throwing (perhaps under the politest and most self- 
respectful of forms) all their weight into the scale of 
peace, prevent the strain from proving excessive. 

It will be noted that relationships such as these are 



238 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the product of innumerable causes of a whoUj^' special 
kind, which are bound up with the very core of English 
life and history in their most characteristic aspects. 
These merits (if such they are) have little to do with 
the benefits attributable to a second Chamber or to the 
individual merits of the hereditary legislators. They 
are an indigenous growth of the country, and cannot 
be transported elsewhere. It may, then, be laid down 
at once that the questions of the value and of the 
reform of the House of 'Lords only belong to the Science 
of Politics so far as that Assembly is a specimen of 
a second Chamber; but to estimate it properly from 
this point of view it must first be abstracted from all 
that is most characteristic of it. 

In discussing a second Chamber, two topics have 
to be kept distinct, though they intermingle at some 
points. One is the general value of such a Chamber, 
and the other its best constitution. The topics are so 
far related that it may be advantageous only to have a 
second Chamber if it be well constituted. 

The usual arguments in favour of a second Chamber 
are (1) that it affords a check upon the characteristic 
tendency of a democratic assembly to hasty and pre- 
cipitate legislation ; (2) that, unless the constitution 
of the second Chamber exactly repeats the constitution 
of the first, its existence affords the opportunity of 
approaching a legislative problem from a new point 
of view and throwing, perhaps, fresh lights upon it ; 
(3) that by prolonging and complicating the process of 
legislation it affords multiplied opportunities for cor- 
recting the oversights, supplying the defects, and im- 
proving the structure, of legislative measures ; (4) that, 



A SKCOND CHAMBER. 239 

in the case of tbe second Cluiniber being representative 
like tbe first, but representative of other chisses of the 
community, it affords a security that the interests of 
these classes are not overlooked. 

The answers made to these arguments in favour of 
a second Chamber of some sort are (1) that the enor- 
mously increased legislative business of modern times 
(the discharge of which may be facilitated by the 
division of labour which the existence of two co- 
ordinate Chambers renders possible) is, on the whole, 
delayed, hampered, and interrupted to an extent wholly 
dispropoi tionate to any benefits derived by a second 
discussion conducted in a different assembly. (2) As 
a barrier against the tempestuous current of democracy, 
the second Chamber is worse than useless, because if 
the more popular Chamber is practically omnipotent, 
resistance will only be persisted in in matters on which 
the mind of the people is not fully made up, and there- 
fore on which no legislation ought to take place at 
all; — which is only saying that the popular Chamber is 
badly composed, not eflBciently representing the people, 
and being prone to reckless legislation : or if, on the other 
hand, the popular Chamber is not omnipotent, and the 
two Chambers are of co-equal efl&ciency, legislation will 
either be the result of a series of compromises, or be 
barred altogether by a succession of dead-locks, as it 
has been in the British Colony of Victoria. (3) So far 
as, like the Senate of the United States and of France 
and the Legislative Councils of the Australian Colonies, 
it represents a different class of interests or sentiments, 
it is pure legislative loss, — without any comj^ensating 
gain, — to have one class of interests or views repre- 
sented at one discussion of a measure and another 



240 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

class at another discussion, instead of having both 
represented simultaneously to the great gain of the 
debate and the saving of time, expense, and labour. 

With respect to the class of arguments adduced in 
favour of two Chambers, those numbered (1) and (3) 
(which relate to the beneficial impediments a second 
Chamber is calculated to oppose to the progress of 
democratic caprice, and which recommend it for pre- 
venting errors and accidental blemishes in legislation), 
they can be disposed of at once. Such arguments 
mark a transitional state of mind, in which really 
popular institutions are not yet accepted without dis- 
trust, and in which what is called democracy is regarded 
as a fatal political miasma which must envelop all States 
some da}', but may by cautious preventive measures be 
staved off for a time. 

The true and suflBcient remedy for bri.d or rash 
legislation is the improvement of the constitution of 
the Assembly which really represents the people, and 
the amendment of its legislative machinery. Such 
amendments would be concerned with the length of 
notice which must be given of a proposed law, with 
the number of times it has to be discussed, with the 
information to be procured by Committees and Special 
Commissioners on its bearings, with the rules of 
debate, and with the opportunities afforded to persons 
outside the House to make their views on the proposal 
known. 

The phases which an ordinary Bill has to pass 
through in the British House of Commons are tolerably 
familiar to all. As a means of showing the possible or 
endless variety of such phases which are available to 
persons who wish to oppose obstacles to the precipitate 



A SECOND CHAM13EK. 241 

flood of popular energy in a Legislative Assembly the 
following extract is given from the French Figaro re- 
lating to the stages which a sanatory Bill for Paris, 
decided on in the Ministerial Council, would have to 
pass through : — 

* (1) The bill will be drawn up by the Minister of Public 
Works; (2) submitted to the Oonseil d'Etat; (3) which will 
appoint a committee ; (4) which will appoint a reporter ; (5) 
who will make a report; (G) which will be submitted to the 
committee; (7) which will approve it; (8) the report will 
be discussed, approved and sent back to the minister; (9) 
who will lay it on the table of the Chamber ; (10) which will 
appoint another committee ; (11) which will appoint a re- 
porter; (12) who will make a report; (13) which will be 
discussed by the committee ; (14) laid again on the table of 
the Chamber; (15) printed; (16) distributed to the de- 
puties; (17) put on the order of the day; (18) put off; (19) 
adjourned ; (20) discussed ; (21) there will be speeches ; 
(22) amendments ; (23) additional paragraphs ; (24) perhaps 
a change of ministry ; (25) then it will be voted ; (26) the 
bill will be sent up to the Senate ; (27) which will refer it to 
the bureaux ; (28) new committee ; (29) new reporter; (30) 
new report; (31) report read to the committee ; (32) laid on 
the table of the Senate.' 

It surely is not needed to have a second Chamber 
for the sole purpose of interrupting and checking the 
too easy flow of popular legislation when such diffi- 
culties as these may have to be surmounted even in the 
case of a Bill which cannot excite much political oppo- 
sition and has already been approved by the Executive 
Government. 

But, further, this terror of what are called demo- 
cratic institutions to which, in some measure, the late 
M. de Tocqueville gave colour by some of his criticisms 



242 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

is wholly unvvorth) of a statesman wlio takes a true 
view of the elements with which he has to deal. It is 
confessed that all Governments in the future will have 
to be conducted with full popular consent, if not by- 
direct popular intervention. An Assembly or body of 
persons which is truly representative of the whole 
people —or which, even if not professedly-representative, 
commands the confidence of the whole people — is not 
likely to be more fanatical, more selfish, more incom- 
petent than some of the Assembly or body of persons 
existing side by side with it, and may well be assumed 
to be less so. 

It is the first object of a statesman not to be 
domineered over by a mob ; but it is equally an object 
with him to become the organ of the people, truly 
announcing their deliberate judgment, and the organ 
of the people only. Thus the temporary subterfuges 
by which it is sought to counterfeit deafness to the 
popular voice under the name of arresting impetuous 
legislation must certainly be swept away, as M. de 
Tocqueville foresaw, yet with gain in all ways rather 
than loss, — which he did not foresee. 

Even in the case in which a second Chamber 
reverses a vote in the popular Chamber on the ground 
that the course of the discussion disclosed such dif- 
ferences of opinion that time ought to be afforded for 
the constituencies to be heard, the advantage that is 
gained by a seeming deference to the true intention of 
the people is lost by the extremely capricious and 
accidental way in which this check is sure to act. It 
will only act at moments when, for other reasons, some 
political antipathy is aroused or grudge entertained. 
It would never be allowed for one Assembly less popu- 



A SECOND CHAMBER. 243 

larly constituted habitually to reverse the decisions of 
another Assembly more poi)ularl3^ constituted, siini)ly 
on the ground that a vote was not that of a sufficiently 
large majority, or from a casual and wholly arbitrary 
conjecture that the other House did not in this matter 
represent the body of Electors. Thus, here again, the 
true remedy for legislation out of harmony with the 
wishes of the people is to be sought in some improved 
constitutional machinery, — such as that examined 
above, — for representing the whole people on as many 
distinct questions as possible. 

There remain the two arguments in favour of a 
second Chamber, based on the supposed necessity of 
representing certain special elements in the country 
not adequately represented in a purely popular assembly, 
or on the advantage of having each piece of legislation 
exposed to the criticism of a body quite differently 
constituted from that which has first approved it or 
must join in approving it. All the second Chambers 
at present existing are constructed on the basis either 
of their representing entirely different elements of the 
population from those represented in the first Chamber, 
or of their being themselves composed of elements 
selected on a principle which disposes the second 
Chamber to apply to the judgment of measures a scale 
very different from that in use in the first Chamber. 

On one or other of these bases are constituted the 
Senate of the United States, which rather represents 
the component States of the Union than the population 
of each State; the French Senate, which represents a 
number of corporate rather than individual electors ; 
the Legislative Council of New South Wales, which is 
nominated by the Crown ; the Legislative Council of 



244 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS 

Victoria, which especially represents the rich pastoral 
occupiers of large tracts of land, and the larger capital- 
ists ; and, lastly, the British House of Lords, which 
pre-eminently represents the interests of the larger 
landed proprietors and of the Established Church. 

So far as the opposition of rival interests goes, it 
is not, — as has been proved by very extended ex- 
perience, — a convenient solution of the real diflBculties 
of the case to have one class of interests represented 
exclusively in one Chamber arid the opposite class of 
interests in the other. By such a seclusion and agglo- 
meration of persons all feeling in the same way and 
in a way which, from the nature of the case, is not 
always, if ever, in harmony with the general interests 
of the country, every opportunity is afforded for obsti- 
nate confederacy and none for placable concession. 

The separation for legislative purposes of the two 
Houses of the British Parliament w^as an accidental 
though inevitable consequence of their distribution for 
the purpose of taxing, according to their several dis- 
positions, themselves or their constituents. In some 
countries, as in France, special provision is made in the 
Constitution for the two Chambers, in certain emer- 
gencies, sitting and voting together. The same ex- 
pedient has been advocated by some eminent Victorian 
politicians as a mode of bringing the two Houses of the 
Victorian legislature more constantly into accord. Even 
in the British Parliament provision is made for what is 
called a Conference between the Houses in case of an 
otherwise insoluble difference of opinion. But the pro- 
cedure is antique and almost obsolete, and does not 
involve the whole body of the two Houses being brought 
together face to face. 



A SECOND CIIA3IBER. 245 

According to the older English Constitution, the 
Clergy were represented in Parliament as an essential 
paH of the Body Politic, and it was here again a mere 
financial accident that they broke away in order to tax 
themselves in their own Houses of Convocation and 
thus lost all direct voice in Government, except so far 
as they continued to be represented by the Abbots, and 
Spiritual Peers in the House of Lords. 

It has already been laid down that where there are 
conflicting interests to be represented in the Legisla- 
ture, two objects have to be attained, — one, that of their 
real and effectual representation ; the other, that of each 
being only represented in proportion to its importance 
relative to all other interests ; so that every opportunity 
is provided for proper concessions and compromises, 
for personal sacrifices, and for a fine correlation of 
ends and means. Now, on behalf of all these objects, 
— that is, of effective representation, harmonious co- 
operation, timely concession, apt adjustment, and habitual 
preference of the more pressing to the less pressing 
claim, — a common discussion in one broadly represen- 
tative Chamber must surpass in value any series of 
discussions conducted first by persons having exclusively 
one order of interests and afterwards by those having 
exclusively another order. When the two alternative 
courses are contrasted in this way, it seems almost 
absurd that there should be any doubt as to the side 
on which the advantage lies. 

And what is here said of the superior value of 
having all classes of interests represented simultaneously 
instead of successively, applies with no less force to the 
value of having various modes of thought, preposses- 
sions, and habitual standards of opinion, all brought to 



246 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

bear in all tlie discussions of a measure, instead of 
having some exclusively recognised and enforced at one 
period of the discussion and the opposite or different 
ODCs exclusively recognised on a quite different occasion 
when the measure has reached a different stage. 
Nothing but the actual — and, so to speak, accidental — 
historical evolution of the British Houses of Parliament 
could have made that appear so natural and familiar 
which is, in fact, wholly alien to all principles of dis- 
cussion as recognised in other fields of enquiry, and 
which can never be part of a permanent political 
system. 

There is no subject which has more exercised the in- 
genuity of modern founders of Constitutions, beginning 
with the writers in the * Federalist,' than the relations 
of the Executive (including the Administrative) and 
the Legislative Authority. Some light may be thrown 
on the question by reflecting on the circumstances of 
the evolution of the existing relations of the Executive 
and the Legislative Authority in the older countries of 
modern Europe which have had the most continuous 
Constitutional history. In these countries the King or 
Queen is the Supreme Executive Authority; but this 
function is not one which has been gradually attained 
to or arbitrarily cast upon the monarch for consti- 
tutional convenience. It is the last relic of far more 
ample powers, which included Legislative authority as 
well, and which, in early feudal days, were limited only 
by the close rivalry of powerful vassals and by occasional 
obligations to a superior but, usually, far removed feudal 
lord. 

The tale of Constitutional History is that of in- 



THE LEGISLATIVE A^'D EXECUTIVE AUTHOIIITIES, 247 

cessant hemming in, at all points, both of the Legis- 
lative and Executive omnipotence of the Crown, though 
in earlier times Legislation was of comparatively small 
importance and the Executive authority of the Crown 
was disputed not so much between the Crown and the 
people as between the Crown and its greater vassals. 
In France the final subordination of all the greater 
vassals was the reverse of a gain to popular rights, 
while in England it was the greater vassals who allied 
themselves with the people, and even with the towns, 
to extort concessions from the Crown. 

The result has been that, after some hundred years' 
struggle, the so-called ' limited ' monarch of modern 
days has carried off from the fight a real and not in- 
considerable portion of Legislative power, and the whole 
of the Executive power. This is subject, however, to 
two serious limitations, — one, that every act done by 
the monarch personally, either in his Legislative or 
Executive activity, is presumed to have been done by a 
particular minister or ministers approved by, and re- 
sponsible to, a popular Legislature ; and the other, that 
the Legislative authority, even as so circumscribed, 
cannot be exerted at all so as to contravene the judg- 
ment of the Legislative Assemblies ; while the exertion 
of every part of his Executive authority is exposed 
to the constant criticism and vigilance of the same 
Assemblies. 

Of course this summary and broad desciiption of 
the state of things is not designed to describe exactly 
any existing constitutional condition, — not even that 
of England, — and it would require many limitations 
and qualifications before it would conform to any. But 
every one will recosrnise that this is the framework 



248 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

wtich pi'esents all that is most characteristic of the 
relation between the modern European Monarch and the 
people, as more or less perfectly represented in Legislative 
Assemblies. So far as the most recently organised Con- 
stitutions go, whether on a professedly Republican basis, 
— such as those of the United States and of France ; 
or on a Monarchical basis, — such as those of Belgium, 
Holland, Italy, Greece, and Spain ; or on what may be 
called a quasi-monarchical basis, — such as those of the 
British Colonies having Parliamentary institutions ; the 
same type reappears everywhere, the most interesting 
variations being those of the present French ConsU- 
tution and the Constitution of the United States. 

The position of the President in these two Constitu- 
tions, with his remarkable personal prerogatives, his 
fixed term of office, and almost complete exemption 
from constitutional or legal control during that term, is 
a wholly new and peculiar political experiment, which is 
still on its trial. The executive functions of the Senate 
of the United States through which, in a limited 
number of cases, it becomes a sharer in the President's 
executive power, is also a novel factor in politics, and 
the value of it can hardly be estimated till more ma- 
terials are supplied by future history for a compara- 
tive inquiry. 

The question which at the time of the foundation of 
the United States Constitution especially perplexed the 
great statesmen and writers of the period, as to the 
true position of the Judicature, may be held to be now 
settled in theory, if not in practice. It is now widely 
recognised, in accordance with the constitutional 
development of English History, that public liberty 
demands an independent Judicature more than almost 



THE LEGISLATIVE AJ^D EXECUTIVE AUTHORITIES. 249 

any other guarantee ; that this Judicature must not 
be dependent on the mere will of the head of the 
Executive for its nomination, for its casual amount 
of remuneration or reward, or for its retention in 
office ; and that, — a provision upon which the United 
States have not always acted, — the Judicature must 
be rendered no less independent of the people than of 
the Executive. 

These several propositions, which are truisms in 
England and the English dependencies, are scarcely 
admitted to the full in any other country. But they 
are propositions which hardly need the support of an 
unbroken line of historical testimony. When once 
announced, they commend themselves as by a sort of 
overbearing logical necessity. 

The questions which are open to much controversy, 
and on which modern experience is too recent and too 
narrow to pronounce with decision, are questions as to 
the relations which ought to exist, first, between the 
Executive and the Legislative Authority, and, secondly, 
between the Executive Authority and the people. 

In the working of the modern Parliamentary system 
the Executive Authority has a most important part to 
play. The more truly popular and broadly representative 
a Parliament becomes the more does it need for the 
conduct of its legislative functions a body of persons 
who command its confidence and who direct its activity 
into the necessary channels. There is no sacrifice of 
independence in requiring that the best opportunities 
of doing independent acts without economic loss of time 
or energy should be opened out. To do this constitutes 
what may be called the Legislative functions of the 
Executive Authority. The play of party spiiit or 



250 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

of other less distinctly manifested forces designates 
tlie persons whom the majority of a Parliament are 
disposed to follow and trust, and in following them the 
Parliament makes no small sacrifice of the claims of 
its individual members. 

But, out of this relationship necessarily springs a 
reciprocal one which is not without its important con- 
stitutional consequences. The Executive Authority 
which subserves the pleasure and prepares the work of 
Parliament tends to become its master. It is in a 
I competition for mastery between the Legislative and 
the Executive Power, and in an incessant struggle be- 
tween them, that a large and most important part of 
modern constitutional life exists. The typical way in 
which the struggle is conducted is something of the 
following kind. 

According to one form, the Legislative Assembly 
in the course of its own debates and divisions, which 
may or may not be characterised as of a true ' party ' 
kind, brings to the surface a certain number of its own 
members in whom the Assembly, represented by the 
permanent majoritj' of its members, is disposed to 
repose implicit confidence for the discharge of such 
administrative work as the Assembly cannot directly 
interpose in, but can superintend and control. Or, 
according to the form which prevails in the United 
States, a prominent portion of the Executive Authority 
i is selected by methods wholly independent of the action 
' of the popular Assembly, and this Assembly only main- 
tains its hold on the Executive through its command 
/ of the national finances, its capacity of legislation, and 
\ its power of adverse criticism. According to the 
written theory even of the English Constitution the 



THE LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE AUTHORITIES. 251 

Monarch is under no obligation to select his Ministers 
from the rants of the members of either House of Par- 
liament, and it has occasionally happened within the 
last few years that a Member of Parliament has, in 
accordance with a well-known Statute of Queen Anne's 
reign, vacated his seat on being appointed to an Execu- 
tive office and has not succeeded in obtaining another 
seat for months together, while continuing in office all 
the time. 

According to the letter of the English Constitution, 
the Privy Council is the true Executive authority in 
which alone are reposed all the Executive functions 
of the Crown, and the Monarch is under no kind of 
obligation to call to his council only members of the 
Legislature, and, in fact, a considerable number of 
members of the Privj^ Council, including many of the 
Judges, have never sat in Parliament. 

In most Continental countries, which in the general 
constitution of the Legislature have followed British pre- 
cedents, the choice of the Executive is far more depen- 
dent on the arbitrary will of the Monarch or President 
than it is in England on any authority but that of the 
House of Commons. In England, at the present time 
it is notorious that the choice of a Prime Minister, 
and, incidentally, of all his Cabinet, is determined 
only by the majority of the House of Commons as 
evolved by a series of divisions sufficient to manifest 
its reality and solidity, and proceeding on the lines 
marked out by strict party organisation. It is only in 
the very exceptional cases in which there are more 
than two parties strongly marked and considerable in 
point of numbers that the direct personal influence of 
the Monarch may be invoked to determine who, as 



252 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Prime Minister, shall undertake the formation of a 
Government. . 

Thus, in ordinary cases, in England the initiative 
of forming the Executive Government proceeds from 
the popular Assembly ; in some Continental countries 
having representative institutions, either from the 
Monarch, — as in Germany, — or from the two Assemblies 
sitting together and the popular Assembly alone, — as 
in Prance; or from the people directly supplemented 
by the popular Assembly, — as in the United States. 

There is no country in which the continual presence 
of every important member of the Executive Govern- 
ment, and especially of the Chief of the Cabinet, 
in one or other of the two Chambers is held to be so 
indispensable as it is in England. In America the 
distance of the President from Congress, with which 
he only communicates in occasionally written utterances 
of a strictly formal kind, is said to present one of the 
most serious impediments to facility of political action 
especially at critical times. His irremovability and his 
provisional Legislative veto tend of themselves to make 
him a power in the State wholly exempt from either 
Parliamentary or popular control. The position was, 
no doubt, specially created as a counterpoise to what 
at the time of the foundation of the Constitution, was 
believed to be a hazardous experiment in democracy. 

In the present day, when popular legislatures based 
on a widely extended suffrage have become little less 
than universal, the irresponsible and autocratic powers of 
the President, coupled with his firm tenure of office, can 
only produce anomalies in Government which nothing 
but the exceptional wisdom and self-restraint of par- 
ticular Presidents can prevent from becoming disastrous. 



THE PKESIDENCY OE THE UNITED STATES. 253 

The United States have been able to defer the con- 
sideration of a remedy for this confessed flaw in their 
constitution because of the remarkable sequence of 
able men who have occupied the Presidential office, 
and also because of the absorbing problems of recon- 
struction and financial recovery which have called for 
and found an exceptional amount of patriotic co-opera- 
tion and self-renunciation in all quarters. 

But it can hardly be expected, that in ordinary 
times the population of the States will continue to be 
content to put into commission for so long a period 
together so large a proportion of their indisputable 
right of control over Legislation and more particularly 
over Administration, especially when the Monarchical 
States of Europe have become one and all governed 
at every point by purely popular institutions, and when 
the character of the nation is deeply involved in the 
prevention and exemplary punishment of Executive 
abuses. 

Thus the control of the Executive Authority by the 
English House of Commons, and the exemption of the 
President of the United States from any such control, 
present the two poles of possible relationship between 
the Authority which makes the law and the Authority 
which sees to its execution and conducts the adminis- 
trative task of Government. 

It is, however, scarcely possible to devise any theo- 
retical constitution which should, at all times and in all 
circumstances, maintain a due balance between the 
Legislative and the Executive Authority. There are 
some departments in which., from the very nature of 
the case, they are always tending to encroach on each 

other, and the occasional mischiefs or even calamities 
12 



254 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

resulting from this tendency, if unchecked, can only be 
kept at a distance or remedied by a tliorougb recogni- 
tion of the perils at hand. 

There are, for instance, some departments of ad- 
ministration for the supervision of which a popular 
Assembly cannot be suited, if it is broadly constituted 
enough to do its own appropriate work well. Such 
I departments are the management of the Army, Navy, 
I and Police, the conduct of Foreign Relations, and the 
' Government of Dependencies, especially when, — as in 
the case of India, — the Dependency can supply very 
little material for its own Government and calls for a 
special amount of knowledge and skill of the highest 
kind in those who rule it. 

In some countries, and especially in Trance, the 
management of the Police has been, for years, so 
entirely withdrawn from the intervention of the Legis- 
lative that the department of Government which deals 
with it has acquired a degree of irresponsible authority 
which is a dangerous menace to public liberty. The 
peril is all the more serious in countries in which there 
is no Habeas Corpus process, and in which the methods 
of criminal procedure concede to the police engaged in 
investigating a crime an amount of licence in secretly 
examining any number of persons on the barest sus- 
picion, which would be scouted in countries which have 
followed the English type of criminal proceedings. 

The evil is intensified in countries where a highly 
centralised system of administration prevails ; and here 
the local and municipal control of the police (though 
this has been much infringed upon of late in England 
by the Metropolitan Police Acts) may present effectual 
barriers to the development of an uncontrolled central 



ORGANISATION OF THE POLICR 255 

police Agency. It is obvious that a police system, to 
be really effective, must have extensive ramifications, 
must be inspired by a common spirit and subjected to 
an unity of management, and must have a large portion 
of its most important work habitually concealed from 
view. 

In all this, however, there are abundant oppor- 
tunities for the growth of a government within, and 
yet only too much outside, the general Government 
of the State. The more silent, prompt, and elastic 
are its movements, the more effective it is likely to 
be for its own peculiar ends, and yet all these require- 
ments wholly unfit it to satisfy the scrutinising require- 
ments of a popular Assembly which does all its work 
in the broad light of day. The result of a com- 
promise between public justice and public liberty is that 
the scrutiny is less close than is needed for the one end 
and the prosecution of offences is less vigorous than is 
needed for the other. 

Nevertheless there is no reason for an Assembly 
of popular representatives to ignore their functions, as 
the sole and last refuge of the obscure and dependent 
classes of society, on the ground that the police must 
be irresponsible if crime is to be checked at all. 
As in all other political matters, a balance must be 
struck between different and incompatible ends. The 
first duty will be to provide by Legislation, and by 
the creation of fit institutions, that the Police force 
be not centralised more than is absolutely needed for 
the public safety, — and that every opportunity is 
afforded by the intervention of a local and independent 
magistracy for proper publicity and for the vindication 
of innocence. The next duty is that of securing that ) 



256 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

all abuses are brought to ligbt^ and that the responsible 
members of the Executive Government are vigilantly 
checked and criticised by the popular Assembly. 

It is well-known that, in Paris, the sole institution 
which has survived from the days of the old monarchy, 
throughout all the storms of revolution and repeated 
changes in the form of Government, is that of the 
organisation controlled by the Prefect of Police. The 
secret methods of French criminal procedure enabled 
the police to become masters for successive genera- 
tions of the private affairs of a large number of 
persons, some of them in influential positions, and most 
of them interested in purchasing silence by connivance 
at police usurpations. There is reason to believe that 
it was against this network of subtle and irresponsible 
despotism that much of the popular indignation which, 
at the close of the Franco-German war, took the form 
of ' the Commune ^ was directed ; and some of the lead- 
ing Communists have alleged that the incendiarism 
which destroyed public buildings had for its original 
object the annihilation of the records of domiciliary 
espionage treasured up in. the archives of the Police. 
Certainly, it is notorious that one aspect, and that the 
least exceptionable one, of the Communist movement 
was that of substituting local for central Government 
in a large class of matters of which the Police was the 
most prominent. 

It may be laid down then as a fixed political 
principle that under all forms of Government the 
management of the Police force will be a lasting and 
justifiable object of popular jealousy and watchfulness. 
In proportion to the numbers of the police, as demanded 
by the growth of population and by the multiplication of 



THE ARMY AND NAVY. 257 

transactions and relationsliips, will be their individual 
incompetency and their corporate strength when highly 
organised. Nothing but just laws, publicly and strictly 
executed by a high class of educated magistrates 
exposed at every moment to public surveillance, and 
abundant opportunities for bringing to light every 
abuse committed against the most insignificant member 
of the population, can ever afford sufficient guarantees 
against public liberty being eaten away in secret all 
the while that constitutional principles and democratic 
forms make the loudest protestations in its favour. 

The management of the Army and Navy has long 
been recognised as affording a chief opening for Execu- 
tive aggression. In England up to Charles I.'s time, a 
standing army in time of peace was regarded as the 
symbol of despotic as opposed to constitutional rule. 
The earlier English Constitution had done its utmost 
to render the forces of the country subject to local 
control in the counties, and to ensure all special levies 
for foreign wars being subject, financially, to strict Par- 
liamentary control. The tradition of this control has 
been handed down to the present day, when the grant 
for the two services is renewed year by year, and the 
Mutiny Act empowering the Crown to levy soldiers 
up to an accurately computated number, and to make 
Articles of War for their discipline, has to be passed 
year by year. 

It is usually the object in more military countries, 
such as Germany, to obtain a Parliamentary grant 
reaching over some years, so as to be, in the interval, 
exempt from popular criticism, in respect of the use to 
which the army is put, and the details of the mode in 



258 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS 

wliicli the levy is made. Indeed, in Continental coun- 
tries, where the conscription universally exists, and 
where the practice of passing the whole male popu- 
lation through, the Army is becoming more and more 
habitual, the command of the Army during the years 
for which Parliament has surrendered its right even of 
financial control, puts an inordinate power in the hands 
of the Executive. 

It is not merely that the soldiery form a physical 
support to the Executive against resistance, but that 
the hand of the Executive is made to be felt, through 
countless subordinates and delegated agents, in every 
spot and hamlet of the country. Even in times of pro- 
found peace, the whole population has more to do with 
the central military than with the local civil authority. 
If there are complaints of abuse or of trespass on con- 
stitutional rights, the matter becomes one of military 
order and discipline, and is taken out of the range 
of the common civil courts. The arbitrary wiU of a 
capricious petty officer becomes substituted for fixed 
and well-understood laws. Remedies have to be begged 
by servile petition, by ignominious compromise, by 
corrupt purchase, not demanded, as of right, in a public 
Court of Justice. The sense of self-respect and self- 
reliance is weakened to the lowest point, and popular 
Government becomes merely the shadow of a tyrannical 
dominion which has its centre in a very different 
quarter. 

What is described here as the peculiar characteristic 
of those countries in which the levy is universal, and 
where Parliament abandons its control for a definite 
term of years, is only true to a very small degree in such 
countries as England and the United States, in which 



THE AEMY AND NAVY. 259 

military service is free and the popular Assembly re- 
tains a suflBciently firm hold on the War department of 
the Executive Government to prevent the arbitrary rule 
which is an inevitable adherent of all military insti- 
tutions from crystallising into permanent principles. 
But in these countries, the danger, though comparatively 
slight and remote, is still real. The use of the Army 
in times of alleged sedition, and even of riot, is a 
matter in respect of which the Executive needs to be 
watched with the utmost vigilance. 

Even apart from the physical strengthening of the 
Executive by the Army, the political influence which 
the Executive exerts through this medium is not incon- 
siderable. The officers of all grades, and the more 
intelligent soldiers, are likely to be much at one on large 
classes of questions either political or closely allied to 
politics, and to agree in being indifferent to other large 
classes of questions. Thus at moments when it is appre- 
hended that some national affront has been received from 
another State, or when the popular conscience demands 
that some concession of territory be made, or that a 
long pending controversy be closed by a conciliating 
adjustment of rights, or that arbitration be preferred to 
war, it usually happens that the military profession are 
all on the side of belligerency rather than of peace. This 
may be of small consequence, unless the people are 
only just so far roused that strongly expressed divi- 
sions of sentiment manifest themselves. In such 
circumstances, if the Executive Government chances to 
favour a warlike rather than a peaceful policy, it is of 
no small account that it has with it so larg^e, so crene- 
rally intelligent, and so compact a body of opinion as 
that represented by the military profession and all 



260 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

closely connected with it by ties of blood or of in- 
terest. 

In speaking of the watchfulness with which the 
Executive Government has to be regarded on the ground 
of the support it may derive, at certain emergencies, 
from the military classes, it mnst not be forgotten, 
furthermore, that in the management of the Army and 
Navy the Government is the greatest employer of labour 
in the countrj^, and in the employment of this labour 
has the command of the greatest amount of capital. 
Every one knows the influence, social and political, 
which is wielded by employers, and of which no electoral 
or other restrictive laws can rob them. The larger the 
army and navy, the more numerous are the func- 
tionaries, of every degree of hierarchical subordination, 
through whom the Government has to act. 

Even where gross abuses are avoided and the 
Government is, on the whole, disposed to do its best 
and to act honestly, it is almost impossible to check all 
the officials who have to choose whom to employ, whom 
to contract with, whose pay to increase and whose to 
diminish, whom to retain and whom to discharge, whom 
to reward and whom to punish. Here, too, again, an 
innumerable quantity of interlacing interests are deeply 
concerned in labour being plentiful and uninterrupted. 
A new fortification or dockyard or arsenal ; the breaking 
out of war ; the despatch of troops in large masses to a 
dependency in disorder ; any of these means the well- 
being and regular means of livelihood for thousands 
and thousands of families, as the opposite of them 
means their loss and suffering. 

It is impossible then to expect political impartiality 
from the classes of society which have so vast a stake 



THE ARMY AND NAVY. 261 

in the game of life and death. No donbt miracles 
of patriotism and of self-abnegation have been found, 
again and again, at memorable crises, as in America 
and the North of England during the War of Secession ; 
but the statesman cannot act as if human nature would 
in all similar emergencies attain the same elevated 
range of sentiment. In ordinary times, the physical 
claims of a man's wife and children are at least as 
near to him as any other interests, and usually far 
nearer than all other interests put together. 

If, then, this is true when the Executive Govern- 
ment acts honestly and abstains from using unfair 
pressure on the myriads of persons it employs, it is 
obvious how easy it is for it to operate on public senti- 
ment in all those cases in which its views are really at 
one with the interests of those who work for it. It 
is against this fallacious exhibition of public opinion, 
turned to account by an unscrupulous Executive, that a 
popular Assembly must be upon its guard. The remedy 
is to test the allegation that public opinion is on the 
side of the Government, by examining in what quarters 
that opinion is manifested ; by referring to the printed 
organs favoured by the labouring classes ; by attending 
to the sort of arguments which have weight at public 
meetings ; by studying election addresses to such classes 
as dockyard labourers and constituencies in garrison 
and sea-port towns; and by watching the course of 
deputations to responsible Ministers. 

In a country in which the expi-ession of opinion is 
really free, it will be easy, in a short time after the 
public mind is fairly roused, to distinguish a real from 
a factitious popularity of a Governmental act ; and if, 
on applying such tests, the act is discredited, the 



262 THE SCIENCE OP POLITICS. 

Government can then only justify it by reference to 
the intrinsic merits of the case. 

It should be needless to supplement these remarks 
on the perils, incident to the position of the Executive 
Government as an employer of Labour, by noticing the 
importance, on the one hand, of providing innumerable 
checks, — of the nature of strict accounts, audits, in- 
spections, publication of quarterly statements of the 
most minute accuracy in detail, — upon extravagance 
and corruption ; and, on the other hand, of following up 
by a special legal machinery every alleged irregularity, 
and of remorselessly punishing every underhand trans- 
action, and, still more, every species of fraud, whether 
committed by the highest or the lowest official. 

It would seem from some miserable passages in the 
recent history of the TJnit3d States that the com- 
plication of modern Government has surpassed the 
powers of the republican institutions, introduced a 
century ago, to grapple with the widespread corruption 
to which an opening is given. Here again the inde- 
pendence of the head of the Executive Government and 
its remoteness from Congress render the exercise of 
the popular judgment far too ineffective. 

There is another mode in which, in modern times, 
and to an extent which is ever increasing with 
economical progress, the Executive Authority exerts a 
political influence which needs not only counteracting 
institutions but also unresting vigilance of control on 
the part of the Legislature. The Executive Authority is 
not only the greatest capitalist in the country so far as 
the employment of labour and the making of contracts 
are concerned, but is also the greatest capitalist so far 
as the power of operating on the money-market is 



THE EXECUTIVE AS A CAriTALIS'J\ 263 

concerned. This latter power is almost more important 
tlian the former one, because it reaches into foreign 
countries ; it reposes on a very subtle connexion of 
political and economical duties equally incumbeut 
on the Executive Authority ; and it involves so much 
secrecy of action that it almost defies the scrutiny of 
the most vigilant members of the Legislature as well as 
of the intelligent public outside. 

In the communities of the ancient world almost the 
only mode in which the Executive Government could 
operate on the value of money and on prices was by- 
debasement or alteration in value of the current coin ; 
and the repeated recourse had by Eome to measures of 
this sort, from the period of the troubles introduced by 
the Punic wars, are well remembered as forming some 
of the causes of national disorganisation which culmi- 
nated in the Empire. In modern times the mode of 
operating on the coinage is of the more seductive kind 
rendered possible by the general use of paper money. 
The difficulties of restraining Executive abuses in the 
creation of paper money have tested to the utmost 
modern political invention. 

These difficulties have their root in the inseparable 
connexion between the political activity which the 
Executive Authority is bound to exhibit, and the 
money needed to carry it on. Thus in time of war 
or at an apparent critical emergency at w^liich the 
national honour, order, or safety seems ever so indirectly 
involved, the Executive is always held bound to do its 
utmost, and even, if necessary, to pledge the national 
credit to an extent to which no legislative limit could 
ever be put by anticipation. The mode in which this is 
most easily done is by issuing paper money or promises 



264 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICa 

to pay at or after a certain date. These promises may 
or may not be punctually redeemed or else renewed 
wlien the crisis is over ; but the fact that it is the 
Executive which, at the outset, was responsible for 
them, and that it is the Executive which may be 
presumed to have the best means of information 
as to the advisability of redeeming, renewing, or 
supplementing" these pecuniary engagements, and as 
to the times and ways and means for doing so, puts 
the Executive in a position which it requires all the 
energy and vigilance of the Legislature to cope with. 

Apart, indeed, from the supreme crises here alluded 
to, even in the ordinary administration of the country, 
the Executive must be allowed a very large dis- 
cretion as to the contracting of debts and as to the 
modes and times of their payment, as well as the 
securities to be demanded from debtors to the State, 
and as to larger commercial transactions (such as the 
purchase of the bulk of the Suez Canal shares by 
the British Government) which have to be decided on 
without a day's delay. The practice in England of 
allowing the Executive to issue Treasury Bonds at a 
high rate of interest, redeemable within the j'ear^ for 
the purpose of meeting merely temporary deficiencies 
due to financial accidents, or to the necessity of making 
payments before the receipt of the taxes designed to 
meet them, is a recognition of this discretionary power. 

It is most of all in its relation to national taxation 
that the Executive Authority occupies a position of the 
highest financial responsibility, and this position is made 
all the more important in modern times through the 
practice of contracting unredeemable Public Debts. The 
amount of those debts in some of the countries of the 



THE STATE AS A PUBLIC DEBTOK. 265 

Old World is such, that a large proportion of the taxation 
of the country (in England about a third of the im- 
perial taxes) is wholly absorbed in paying the interest 
of debt. It is thus a subject of yearly recurrent concern 
whether any and what portion of this debt can be con- 
veniently paid off at particular periods, and by what 
devices this can be most economically done. The purely 
political question is always involved as to whether 
future generations should be relieved at the cost of the 
present generation, and this depends, partly, on the 
view taken of the comparative wealth of the tax-payers 
now and hereafter (so far as this can be prognosticated), 
and, partly, on the facilities presented, at a given 
moment, by the state of the money-market for pro- 
viding the funds needed to pay off debts. 

Now the initiative of paying off portions of debt 
must necessarily be left in the hands of the Executive 
Government, because any public movement of the sort 
on a grand scale debated and voted by Parliament 
would, of itself, operate on the money market in such 
a way as to change all the conditions of the problem 
and, perhaps, render immediate liquidation no longer 
expedient. Thus it will rest with the Executive Govern- 
ment to make engagements with the creditors of the 
State at its own pleasure and in the exercise of its 
own discretion. It will have to choose the opportune 
moment, the agents, the terms of arrangement ; and 
in respect of each of these matters there are oppor- 
tunities for infinite abuses, not so much on the part 
'yL the Executive Authority, as a corporate body, as 
/on that of corrupt individual members of it who are 
always liable to creep into its ranks. 

There have been too many charges of abuse of their 



266 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

financial position made in recent times against Execa- 
tive Governments or their agents for dangers of this class 
to be treated as nothing better than theoretical halluci- 
nations. The accusations against Financial Ministers 
in the United States for abuse of their authority as 
collectors of customs ; the deplorable revelations of the 
State frauds on which so much of the Executive action 
and personal Government of Napoleon III. in France 
seems to have been based ; the imputations, right or 
wrong, that the disorder in Tunis in 1881 was craftily 
designed, as a money-making plot, to pave the way 
first to anarchy, when certain funds would go down, 
and afterwards to French annexation, when they would 
go up higher than ever ; the implication in certain 
quarters of the purchase by British Executive Authority 
of the Suez Canal shares with a vague scheme of 
Oriental policy to which the British Parliament had 
never been asked to assent ; all these tokens, — which 
might be multiplied indefinitely, — sufficiently prove 
that the modern relations of an Executive Authority to 
Finance present political perils which will be likely to 
increase with time rather than to diminish. 

Dangers of this class are further aggravated through 
the practice which so largely prevails in modern States 
of maintaining a National Bank in peculiar relations 
with the Executive Government. This subject, on one 
side of it, belongs to the topic of the province of 
Government, under which head it will be discussed at 
length. But, on another side of it, and as a political 
fact which actually exists and is likely to exist far into 
future time, some observations must be made upon it 
here. 

The general nature of these National Banks will be 



NATIONAL BANKS 267 

understood from a reference to tlie constitutional situa- 
tions of the Bank of England and of the Bank of 
France. The Bank of England was at its origin a mere 
company of merchants who obtained from the Crown 
certain exclusive privileges in return for the services 
they agreed to render as the intermediate agents of 
the Government for paying the national creditors and 
for receiving the taxes out of which the payments had, 
at fixed intervals, to be made. These privileges and 
corresponding obligations have been repeatedly con- 
firmed, defined, and enlarged by successive Charters, 
usually granted in conformity with special Acts of 
Parliament, the most important of which is the Bank 
Charter Act of 1844. The effect of this Act was entirely 
to separate the business of the issue of notes from all 
the other banking business, — a certain limit being 
affixed to the amount of the issue determined by the 
amount of bullion actually in the coffers of the bank 
at the time of issue. The notes of the Bank of England 
are convertible on. demand, and are legal tender. They 
thus operate as current coin within the country. 

The Bank of France was constituted mainly for the 
purpose of facilitating commerce by affording to mer- 
chants a sure means of obtaining advances on good 
security. It has the power of issuing notes payable to 
the bearer at sight, up to the amount of three times its 
cash in hand ; but these bills are only legal tender by 
special and occasional legislation, which the Court of 
Cassation has declared to be a matter only of police 
and public safety which special contracts can avoid. 
{Cass, 11, Feb. 1873.) 

With respect both to these banks and to other banks 
of this sort, it is obvious that the point at which 



268 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Government pressure is most felt is that which limits 
the right of issue and either enforces the convertibility 
of the notes or, — what amounts to nearly the same 
thing, — makes an inconvertible note legal tender. In 
England the history of repeated commercial crises has 
jDroved that, while the crisis has been aggravated and 
precipitated by the legal impossibility of the Bank 
increasing its issue to meet the emergency, the sudden 
interference of the Executive Government to suspend 
the Bank Charter Act and to enlarge the powers of the 
Bank, w hich that Act alone restricted, has been instantly 
attended by a relaxation of the strain, — even when the 
Bank has not actually had occasion to avail itself of its 
extended rights. 

This fact may or may not be used as an argument 
against the policy of the Act itself; and many of the 
ablest authorities on the subject have employed the argu- 
ment both ways, but especially against the desirability 
of the Government implicating itself at all in the con- 
trol of the commercial community with a view to protect 
those who ought to be able to protect themselves. 

But, whatever may be said from the purely econo- 
mical point of view, there can be no doubt that the 
recognised right of the Executive Authority to interpose 
or not to interpose, or to choose the moment and the 
degree of its interposition, deserves the most jealous 
watchfulness at the hands of the Legislature. The 
two occasions on which the notes of the Bank of 
France were made legal tender (March 16, 1848, and 
August 7, 1870) were times of revolutionary change, 
when the Executive of the hour must, unavoidably, 
be in supreme command of the situation. 

The suspension of the Bank Charter Act by the 



NATION.VL BANKS. 269 

English Executive is, constitutionally speaking, an 
encroachment on the rights of the Legislature which 
would be tolerated in no other department of affairs; 
and it has only been endured hitherto because its good 
results are manifest to all, while its indirect bad results, 
in making the vicissitudes of commerce dependent, in 
the last crisis, — and therefore, through the expectation 
aroused, even from the first, — on the will of the Exe 
cutive Authority are less obvious. It must not be 
forgotten that the Executive Authority must, by the 
nature of the case, consist of a number of persons in 
confidential relations to each other, and likely, many of 
them, to have strong personal, social, or family in- 
terests involv^ed at the occurrence of every monetary 
catastrophe. At such epochs a few hours' advance in 
obtaining information, — and, still more, the slightest 
capacity to direct the springs of action, — may mean 
even for respectable commercial men all the differ- 
ence between disastrous failure and conspicuous 
enrichment. The temptation to abuse such oppor- 
tunities, though in some healthy conditions of society 
it will be generally resisted, will yet too often prevail, 
and the possibility of its prevailing in any case should 
be absolutely provided against. 

The only mode of providing against such moral 
hazards is to withdraw from the Executive, to the 
greatest extent possible, all power of directly in- 
fluencing the money market, even at the moment of 
the most severe strain of public credit. If it be deter- 
mined to persist, on principles to be discussed hereafter, 
in recogmisino: an interference with Commerce and the 
maintenance of National Banks as belonging to the 
province of Government, it will be found necessary to 



270 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

provide some standing Committee of the Legislature, — • 
sucIl as that of the House of Commons for Public 
Accounts, — which shall take advice with the Executive 
even in the interval of the Parliamentarj^ vacation, and 
share the responsibility of all its acts. This Committee 
would keep a minute of all its transactions from day 
to day and from hour to hour, and through its close 
relations with Parliament would have facilities for dis- 
cussing openly the grounds of any exceptional action 
without involving the Executive Government in the fate 
of its measures. 

It is most difficult to maintain a proper check on 
the pecuniary discretion of the Executive in relation to 
Foreign Policy. The subject of Foreign Policy as a 
department of scientific Politics will be discussed, 
independently, later on. But one aspect of it belongs 
to this place. In cases in which the main conduct of 
Foreign affairs belongs, at least so far as the initiative 
is concerned, to the Executive Authority, it is almost 
impossible to prevent that Authority involving the 
country in pecuniary liabilities which the Legislature, 
if fully consulted, might well have shrunk from en- 
countering. 

The purchase by England of the bulk of the Suez 
Canal shares, already alluded to in other connexions, 
is an apposite illustration of this danger. If the pur- 
chase had to be made at all, it must have been made, 
as in fact it was, precipitately and secretly, by the 
Executive Authority. There was no time for delay or 
for prolonged negotiations, and publicity would have 
been fatal to the transaction. But, owing to the haste 
of the proceeding and the absence of full Parliamentary 



rURCHASE OF SUEZ CAN^UL SHARES. *^71 

discussion, the country found itself irretrievably com- 
mitted to a commercial enterprise wholly unprecedented 
and involving almost indefinite pecuniary risk. There 
was absolutely no precedent for the Government of one 
country becoming the main proprietor of an industrial 
and commercial undertaking conducted in the terri- 
tory of another Government and wholly subject to its 
control. 

The Suez Canal Company was a French Company 
having its domicile in France, though, no doubt, it had 
also a domicile of Jurisdiction in Egypt, One result 
was that a Government, the greatest shareholder of all, 
might have to depend upon Foreign Judges sitting in a 
Foreign country (not even that of the enterprise 
itself) for the ascertaining and vindication of its 
rights. The alternative was that of dependence on 
the Egyptian Courts, which by the accident of the 
International Tribunals established there, were in 
themselves an unobjectionable tribunal. 

Questions appertaining to the rights of the share- 
holders, to the debts on the undertaking, to the latent 
and ulterior rights of the Khedive, and even, in some 
emergencies, of the Sultan, (who was one of the 
parties to the original concession,) were numerous and 
complicated, and the solution of them one way or other 
might not only be productive of international em- 
barrassments but involve serious pecuniary conse- 
quences. 

Yet to none of these matters was the attention of 
the British Legislature ever called; nor was there 
opportunity for it to be called. The Executive Autho- 
rity availed themselves of their actual power and com- 
mitted the country to engagements the nature and 



272 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

extent of which it could not itself possibly divine at 
the moment. 

It is needless to recur to the case of Foreign wars 
brought about by Executive diplomacy, or of com- 
mercial Treaties which, though often discussed in 
Parliament, are just as often negotiated by the Execu- 
tive on its own responsibility. In superintending and 
checking the Executive Authority in such matters the 
Legislature will have to bear in mind more and more 
that, quite apart from the more obvious dangers to 
Parliamentary freedom involved in trusting too im- 
plicitly to the Executive of the day, there is hidden 
the danger that the Executive in a popular Government 
may carry with it the show of popular assent and 
confidence, through its command of the numerical 
majority of votes. But the majority themselves will 
do well to be ware of the Frankenstein-monster that 
they themselves have called into being. What they 
allow to-day may become a precedent to-morrow and 
be used against them when the Parliamentary tables 
are turned a few days hence. 

The Executive Authority, by the necessities of its 
composition and of the continued co-operation of its 
members, has a tendency to acquire rapidly a compact- 
ness which itself is full of danger to free Parliamentary 
life. Where this tendency is aggravated by the promi- 
nent influence of an autocratically-disposed chief, or by 
the weak servility of a Parliamentary majority, or by 
the undue dominance in the country of bureaucratic 
institutions (as in France and Germany), the perils 
to public liberty are almost inevitable. The Executive 
possesses itself of the Legislative power, ensures the 
acceptance of a series of measures favourable to its 



CONSTlTUTION.iL PRINCIPLES. 273 

own pretensions, and does its utmost even to sap tlie 
foundations of an independent judiciary and of the last 
bulwarks of j)ublic liberty residing in such institutions 
as Trial by Jury, the writ of Habeas Corpus, and 
regular Magisterial procedure. 

The story is an old one, tracing back to the times 
of Greek Tyrants and Roman Csesars. It has yet to 
be seen whether the story is to be perpetual as well as 
old ; or whether the popular constitutions of modem 
States will suffice to maintain a permanent barrier 
against the aggression of an Executive dressed in the 
little brief authority imparted by a fluctuating majority 
vote. 

Besides the parts of a Constitution which admit of 
being expressed in the formal structure of the Govern- 
ment and in provisions for securing its proper operation, 
there are other parts which are of even greater im- 
portance but do not admit of being so expressed. They 
rather exist as fluid principles, only occasionally con- 
gealed into fixed institutions, such as, in England, the 
processes which regulate trial for libel and treason. 
Parts of the Constitution like these have usually been 
handed down from early times, and are attributable to 
specified documents or grants or memorable historical 
events. They are cherished with fond popular affection, 
and, in healthy periods, on no other subjects is it so 
easy to stir the national jealousy. 

In early England soon after the Conquest, ' the laws 
of Edward the Confessor,^ as supposed to have been 
guaranteed by the Norman invaders, seem to have been 
regarded as a fixed basis of the Constitution which the 
people were entitled to claim, even from a new dynasty. 



274 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

as their national birthrigfht. It was not lon^r till Ma^fna 
Charta and the other Charters which preceded or suc- 
ceeded it acquired an almost sacred efficacy, and even 
to this day it is believed by countless persons who have 
never read a word of the original documents, nor could 
translate them if they once succeeded in reading them, 
that they announced, and that for the first time, all the 
most characteristic doctrines of the English Constitu- 
tion. 

At a still later date the Bill of Eights, the Act of 
Settlement, the Act of Union with Scotland, and even 
the terms of the Coronation Gath, have been regarded 
as possessing a certain constitutional cogency over and 
above their mere force as Acts of Parliament or solemn 
personal engagements of the Sovereign. In the same 
way each other country, in which a traditional consti- 
tution exists at all, reverts to special documents and 
written manifestoes which, at the least, are treated as 
supplying the best evidence of the antiquity of a poli- 
tical claim. 

In France and Italy ' Concordats ' between the civil 
Authority and the Authorities of the Catholic Church ; 
in Germany and neighbonring States the settlement 
brought about by Treaties at the Peace of Westphalia ; 
in the United States the Declaration of Independence, 
and in the British Colonies the first constitutive Act of 
the British Parliament ; are documents the validity of 
which it is scarcely possible by any later legislative 
measure to supersede or call in question. 

Such documents draw their force, in truth, not from 
their scant and often irrelevant verbiage, but from their 
stamping, in visible and lasting forms for ever, reso- 
lutions, concessions, compromises, and arrangements, 



CONSTITUTION.iL FUXCTIONS OF JUDGES. 275 

which were at the time, — and were thereby made to 
continue for all time, — essential parts of the political 
consciousness of the whole people expressing themselves 
by their proper representatives. It is by a long series 
of such material proofs that the constitutional sentiment 
of a people is framed, and it is far more the strength 
of this sentiment itself than the mere words of the 
documents, interpreted like any other written law, that 
constitutes their political efficacy. 

The mode in which the growing and increasingl}^ 
settled constitutional instincts of a people manifest 
themselves in the detail of common life is through 
the decisions of Courts of Justice. This has been 
especially the case in England^ where the Judges have 
not been restrained by the precedents of a legal 
system already fully developed, as was Roman law, 
and where, consequently, they have been free to seek 
for the principles of their judgments in the moral 
traditions of the people themselves. It was such moral 
traditions, brought, as far as possible, into harmony 
with actual usages, and with such written law as there 
was, which enabled the English Judges to pronounce 
against the right of the Crown to impose arbitrary 
taxes, against monopolies, against the use of torture for 
the purpose of eliciting evidence, against irregular tres- 
passes on person and property by the police, against 
the right of the Crown to call Juries to account for 
their verdicts, against the one-sided interpretation of 
treason statutes, and in favour of free speech, free 
right of public meeting, and free association. 

The doctrines of public liberty, so evolved and laid 
down by Courts of Justice in England, have been 
generally translated into written law in the various 



276 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

States of the American Union and into tlie consti- 
tutional Charters of new States which have taken the 
English Constitution as their type. It may be ex- 
pected, hereafter, that most of these doctrines, which 
have been wrought out hy slow degrees and painful 
effort by England, will prove to be henceforth part 
of the world's heritage. They will be universally 
incorporated in all written constitutions ; and, side 
by side with the provisions for popular representation, 
and for defining the mutual relationships of the Execu- 
tive and the Legislative Authority, there will be 
found a series of declarations as to what neither 
the Legislature nor the Executive Authority is, by the 
Constitution, entitled to do. It will be recognised 
in formal terms that there are certain inalienable 
human rights which no majority vote, at any crisis in 
the fortunes of the people, has a right to infringe upon 
ever so slightly. It may require a longer political 
experience before the full reach of these rights can be 
even approximately ascertained ; and they will never 
be so absolutely determined as to be beyond the reach 
of further constitutional evolution. But the world 
cannot go back, and those countries alone will con- 
tinue to advance with it which secure for themselves 
in the firmest manner each step which has been already 
gained by any one of them. 



277 



CHAPTER VII. 

LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 

There is nothing in the political structure of the States 
of the ancient world which, corresponds with what is 
now meant by ^ Local Government.' 

It is true that, so often as a State comprehended 
within, its dominions territories far removed from each, 
other or from the seat of Government^ various devices 
were resorted to for making the hand of the Government 
felt at the extremities, and for securing not merely 
order but in some measure harmonious contribution to 
common ends. The favourite Oriental mode of bringing 
this about was by the formation of quasi-independent 
satrapies, in the government of which the delegate of 
the sovereign was supreme within the limits of the 
province entrusted to him, and only responsible to his 
superior for the provision of a military contingent, for 
banding over revenue received, and for maintaining 
jrder. He was usually liable to be arbitrarily deposed 
ind superseded. 

This mode of Government seems to have obtained 
in the middle period of Ancient Egjpt, at the time of 
the Semitic invasions and lengthened usurpation ; in 
Persia under the immediate successors of Cyrus the 
Great; and is well known to be the occasion of the 
13 



278 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

political embarrassments of the modern Ottoman Empire 
and of the Empire of China. 

The Eoman Republic and Empire resorted to the 
same method of administration, though in a qualified 
form, in the government of the provinces successively 
annexed. The period of the appointment was usually 
for only a year, though it was occasionally prolonged. 
Its continued prolongation for an unprecedented period 
in the case of Julius Csesar was, in fact, the most serious 
omen of the coming reconstruction of the very basis of 
government. 

Furthermore, in the Eoman dominions, the numerous 
colonial settlements scattered about, and the various 
corporate and personal rights of Roman citizenship 
conceded to the residents in the different classes of 
towns, all tended to restrict the autocratic power of 
the Proconsul or Procurator, and to bring the subject 
people- into direct relation with the central Government. 

At successive intervals under Augustus, under 
Diocletian, and under Justinian, the whole system of 
Provincial administration, — especially in respect of the 
administration of justice, — was recast, but always with 
the object of avoiding the local irresponsibility which 
was becoming so disastrous in the later days of the 
Republic, and which has become a byword in cha- 
racterising the despotisms of the East. 

Nevertheless, at all periods of the Roman Empire 
the conditions were lacking for combining local free- 
agency with central unity of control; and this was one 
of the chief causes why the efforts of the Roman 
Empire to govern such vast dominions were premature 
and destined to failure. What these conditions are will 
shortly appear. 



FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 279 

Another class of tentative efforts, in the old as well 
as in the newer world, to reconcile the claims of local 
independence with central unity is that known under 
the name of ' Federation.' The idea and the practice 
of Federation are at least as old as the supremacy of 
Athens over her Ionian allies, and as the Achaean league ; 
and the numerous political and commercial leagues of 
the Middle Ages all expressed the same necessity of 
combining the advantages of corporate strength and 
individual freedom. 

The numerous attempts at Federation among the 
American colonies, previous to the final one ushered in 
at Philadelphia, sprang from the same necessities 
which the United States Government find it at this 
day no light task duly to recognise and provide for. 
It was the war of Independence which, with extra- 
ordinary rapidity, brought to a head both the advan- 
tages and the embarrassments of a system of Federal 
government; and a Federal constitution was hardly 
created before it was modified in the direction adverse 
to true Federal principles and favourable to the supre- 
macy of the Central Authority. As time went on the 
adequacy of a Federal system for the government of so 
large a part of North America, in the face of the com- 
pactly organised Governments of Europe, was tested 
again and again by all varieties of constitutional crises 
at home and of diplomatic hazards abroad. The Seces- 
sion War brought the question to a head, and it was 
decided against the Federal system and in favour of a 
system of Local Government, the forms only of an 
extinct Federalism being retained. . 

It has, then, to be determined, as a matter of 
scientific investigation, what are the conditions, — 



280 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

social, economical, and national, — wliich recommend a 
system of Local Government in preference either to a 
rule by provincial deputies or to a true federal organi- 
sation. It is assumed that the essence of a system of 
Local Government consists in a distribution being 
effected between the governmental, legislative, and 
executive powers, in such proportions as that the claims 
of unity of control and of supervision are reconciled, or 
presumed to be reconciled, with the claims of inde- 
pendent management and self-taxation on the part of 
all the groups of persons locally associated who, taken 
together, constitute the population of the country. 

It is, indeed, not so much a distribution of all the 
powers of government which really takes place, as a 
delegation of certain powers of government; and in 
describing what Local Government is in its essence, 
it must be remembered that the actual forms of it 
which are manifested on every side seldom fulfil the 
logical conception. Thus where the interference and 
supervision of the Central Government becomes inces- 
sant and no important act can be done by a Local 
Authority without the acquiescence of the central 
department, or whore the assessment of a tax has to 
be approved by that department, or where the chief 
officials in the different local seats of administration 
are appointed by a central authority and for short 
periods and under stringent control by that authority. 
Local Government may exist only in name. It is only 
by understanding what are the broad characteristic 
features of Local Government as contrasted with a 
purely centralised system of government, on the one 
hand, and, on the other, with such peculiar phases of 
decentralised government as Federation or Provincial 



LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. 281 

delegacy, that its existence in any particular case can 
be detected and its merits and demerits assigned. 

The history of Local Government in England may, 
without any imputation of illogical patriotic conceit, be 
fairly resorted to for the purpose of throwing light upon 
the essential conditions of Local Government generally. 
Besides England itself, the countries in which Local 
Government has already naturally developed itself with 
the greatest exuberance and promise are the United 
States, the British Australian Colonies, and the German 
Empire. 

In the United States the local institutions more 
distinctly than any other part of the system of 
Government spring from an English stock. In the 
Australian Colonies the English people established all 
their native institutions, so far as they were at all 
applicable, in their most mature form. In Germany, 
in spite of the Imperial traditions and the auto- 
cratic military organisation which, for the present, 
tends to stifle all popular freedom, the Local Govern- 
ment of England is that part of the English Consti- 
tution which has most profoundly impressed theoretical 
writers of authority, and is being used as a type 
in the constitutional transformation which every part 
of the Empire is rapidly. undergoing. Professor Gneist 
published a treatise on ' Self-Govemment in Eng- 
land,' the result of long and patient enquiry on the 
spot, which serves even for Englishmen as the best and 
most exhaustive authority on the minutest problem or 
surviving antiquarian curiosity on which it may be 
consulted. 

The reasons of this pre-eminence of England as an 
authoritative precedent on the theory and practice of 



282 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Local Government are two. One reason is that the 
primitive circumstances of the political settlement of 
England, — first by those who (in spite of current 
criticism) are most conveniently denominated by the 
name of Saxons and then by the Normans, — concurred 
to bring the Local Government of parishes and counties 
into a special relation with the Central Government of 
the King and the King's Council which has had no 
exact parallel elsewhere. 

The other reason is that this special relation has 
been maintained intact, in spite of all sorts of modifica- 
tions and developments in point of detail for 800 years 
without interruption from civil strife or external foe. 
There is no other country, not even Japan, of which 
two similar propositions could be laid down. 

The history of the English parish is traceable so far 
back that its origin is lost in that period when the 
Romans had scarcely yet withdrawn, and when the 
institutions of the British Church were still the most 
influential elements in the civilisation of the island. 
At this period, which intervened between the publica- 
tion of the Codex Theodosius II. in the West in 438 
A.D. and that of the Code of Justinian in the East in 
529 A.D., it is well known that the lioman Empire 
was throughout its length and breadth almost as 
elaborately organised for purposes of ecclesiastical as 
for those of civil Government. Indeed the Bishops and 
Clergy had civic functions of the utmost importance 
cast upon them by the Secular Government, and 
Christian assemblies and Churches were freely turned 
to account for witnessing the performance of civil acts. 

Recent writers on Ecclesiastical antiquities have 
pointed out that the ecclesiastical dioceses and divisions 



EARLY ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 283 

survived the civil, as is conspicuous in the names of 
many French Bishoprics in the present day. In England 
indeed the inroads or rather the violent colonising 
raids of the pagan Teutons from the European Con- 
tinent not only drove the native Britons into the 
Western fastnesses of Wales and Cornwall but broke 
up the already tottering fabric of Eoman civilisation in 
the cities, and with it the crumbling relics of eccle- 
siastical organisation. It is still a moot point how far 
the Teutonic invaders, as they became settled, revived 
the expiring life of Eoman and Ecclesiastical order, or 
how far they simply introduced their own institutions 
as existing in their Continental homes. They certainly 
adhered to the general sites of the Eoman towns though 
not to the identical spot previously occupied. It may 
be at least supposed, that, when the Christian Church, 
w^as organised afresh, by Augustine and his successors, 
the more enduring of the landmarks of the primitive 
British Church were rather re-invigorated than super- 
seded. 

The history of the County and the ' Hundred,' 
and of the Courts and Assembly which belong to them, 
has been carefully investigated of late years by Professor 
Stubbs and Mr. Freeman, and the result of their en- 
quiries seems to establish that these divisions have 
their origin not in any artificial organisation devised by 
any particular King or Government, but in the original 
separation from each other of the different sections of 
settlers, and in the habitual organisation (of the kind 
described by Tacitus) which prevailed among the 
German tribes. 

If this be true, it is evident that, just as parochial 
organisation traces back to the Church and to the 



284 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

joint civil and ecclesiastical organisation of the Roman 
period, so County and other local divisions trace 
back to the peculiar circumstances of the Teutonic 
settlement and to the home traditions of the settlers. 
It appears then that in England all the main units of 
Local Government now in force, — that is, the County, 
the Parish, and the Hundred, — were anterior to the 
consolidation of the English Monarchy and have a 
continuous history which is older, and so longer, than 
that of the English Parliament. 

The effect of the Norman Conquest, — as is now well 
known through the amount of erudition which has been 
expended on this special topic, — was not to destroy or 
weaken the local organisation which it found in exist- 
ence, but to use it to the utmost, while bringing it 
into closer relation with the Centi^l Government and 
into harmony with the stricter feudalisation of the 
country. 

The general effect of the Conquest, from a judicial 
and from an administrative, and soon from a financial, 
point of view, was that of increased centralisation. 
But when once the supremacy of the King in all 
causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, was duly protected 
against local (if not against priestly) insubordination 
the County and parochial organisation could work 
together in excellent concert with the characteristic 
feudal institutions for the keeping of the peace and for 
the military defence of the country which were intro- 
duced by the Norman Kings in an improved, if not a 
totally new, form. 

This historical review serves to explain the peculiar 
conditions under which Local Government has thriven 
to the extent it has in England. The first of these 



E^VRLY ENGLISH LOC.VL GOVERNMENT. 285 

conditions is that its arrangements be as naturally con- 
genial to the habits and tastes of the people as are the 
common incidents of domestic life. The smallness of 
the circle within which Local Government, as contrasted 
with central government, is conducted, while it brings 
its responsibilities and charges more closely home to 
each person found within the circle, also claims from 
him an amount of individual practical activity from 
which ordinary persons, in the larger circle of central 
government, usually find themselves exempt. The 
Parish Vestry, the Hundred Mote, the Court Baron, the 
Local Board, the Court of Quarter Sessions, are each 
of them small Parliaments or judicial benches in one 
or other of which the most insignificant householder, as 
well as the wealthiest territorial proprietor, may find his 
place. There is needed a certain amount of training, 
moral self-restraint, public spirit, capacity for co- 
operation, which cannot be called forth in a day at the 
will of a legislator, but which may require generations 
for their diffusion throughout every portion, even the 
remotest, of a country. 

It need not be said that these local institutions 
themselves, if they require, as their primary conditions, 
a certain natural disposition and capacity in the people 
themselves for their due operation, also react power- 
fully back on those who take part in their operation. 
There could be no better school for the acquisition of 
genuine political habits, though it must be remembered 
it is, at best, only a school, and he who brings to bear 
on the Government of a great country nothing but 
the limited ideas and resources to which he has been 
accustomed to in a narrower area is properly stigmatised 
as exhibiting only the talent of a ^ vestryman.' 



286 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

Again, for the effectual working of Local Government 
in harmony with the exigencies of the central govern- 
ment, it is necessary that a certain community of 
sentiment, national spirit, moral conscientiousness, and 
economical information be found in all parts of the 
country. The greater the community in all these 
respects the better, and it is the tendency of a broad 
and effective system of national education to produce 
this community to an ever greater extent. It can- 
not be expected that identity in these respects will 
ever be reached, any more than that the time will ever 
come when people will always think and feel alike even 
in exactly similar conditions. But it may be expected, 
that, taking one part of the country with another, the 
main divergencies of thought and sentiment will be due 
only to real and important local peculiarities of the 
kind for which independent Local Government is 
specially needed as a supplement to central govern- 
ment. So long as the people are unequally civilised or 
as education is only partially diffused, the real dif- 
ferences due to important local diversities are obscured, 
and the Central Administration remains uninformed 
as to the requirements of particular districts. 

It is one beneficial consequence of a centralised 
administration that it tends to prevent the different 
portions of the population advancing at suK:h an un- 
equal rate that Local Government might become rather 
an aggravation of a social disease than a manifestation 
and means of health. Everything that tends to weld 
the population together in thought, sentiment, habits 
of life, and moral instincts renders them fit rather than 
unfit for Local Government. In England such influences 
as the Church and Clergy, the diffusion of the Bible 



LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND. 287 

after the Reformation period, the popular literature at 
all times broadly circulated, the very community of 
sentiment brought about by the French wars, and the 
feudal burdens, all tended to produce an extraordinary 
amount of national uniformity, in spite of much pro- 
vincial ignorance, rudeness of manners and tastes, and 
even dialectical peculiarities. 

In recent times, indeed, England has shared, in an 
unusual degree, in all the extraordinary advantages 
in the way of means of locomotion and of mutual com- 
munication which modern inventions have introduced 
in all civilised countries. The railway, the telegrajjh, 
the newspaper press, are all means for equalising the 
knowledge as well as the tastes and opinions of the 
people, in all parts of the country. This does not 
imply, what is so much feared in some quarters, the 
production of a dull uniformity of type or the oblitera- 
tion of all originality and specific genius. The gain 
is obtained not by levelling down but by levelling up. 
No political advantage accrues from retaining ignorance 
or brutishness under the name of independent thought. 

The more men think alike in respect of all the 
problems which admit of demonstrative proof, the more 
likely are they to be sagacious and discriminating, and 
therefore to have fine differences among themselves, in 
respect of matters which, at present, are only matters 
of probable conjecture. The more they agree in com- 
prehending the needs and situation of all parts of the 
country, the more acute is likely to be their sensibility 
to the special wants of the part which is nearest to 
them. Thus one of the most important conditions for 
the existence of Local Government in a beneficial form 
is an equality of mental and moral attainments in the 



288 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

population resident in all parts of the country, even 
those the most removed from each other. 

A last condition of Local Government is that of a 
sufficiency of topographical area to prevent it being a 
needless excrescence on the central government. It is 
obvious that much of the advantages of Local Govern- 
ment must depend on the amount of work to be done by 
the central government and on the convenience of dele- 
gahing some of it to local bodies. But the case might 
present itself, — and in fact does in some very diminutive 
States such as Belgium, Holland, and the Hawaiian 
Islands, — of the whole territory of the State being no 
greater than can be conveniently administered, for all 
purposes, by the central government. In these cases, it 
is quite possible that Local Government may exist, as it 
does in those countries especially in the Towns ; but its 
characteristic advantages are scarcely perceived, and all 
the possible disadvantages of inequality of conditions, 
uncertainty of rules, and perplexity as to jurisdiction, 
are felt in an enhanced degree. 

It has been already seen that the area may be so 
large that on this account alone Local Government 
is inapplicable, and some such device must be re- 
sorted to as the Federal system lately introduced 
into the British Colonies in North America, and 
the division into several distinctly organised Presi- 
dencies of the British territories in India. It is, of 
course, impossible to lay down any distinct limits to 
the area for which, and for which alone, the utmost 
advantages of Local Government would be obtained. It 
depends not merely on the area as measured but on the 
area regarded in its relation to the actual habits and 
condition of the people who populate it. Thus it might 



CONDITIONS FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 289 

come about, in England, say, that communication 
between all the parts of the country was so incessant, 
and the practice of living in towns having an identity 
of conditions and wants had become so persistent as 
largely to depopulate the country places, and that the 
economic saving effected by a central organisation had 
become so widely appreciated that the local areas should 
be constantly enlarged till they were nearly co-extensive 
with that of the central government. The experience 
already obtained in the case of the extension of High- 
way districts, of Poor Law Unions, Local Government 
Districts, and of School Board Districts, and the call for 
County Boards of a representative kind, seem to point 
to the antique area of the parish being gradually 
superseded, and Local Government itself undergoing an 
entire transformation which, in fact, though not in 
appearance, tends towards increased centralisation. In 
every change that is made, the newly created authority 
is brought into the closest possible relation with the 
central administrative department. 

Having ascertained the conditions in which Local 
Government, properly so called, is possible, the next 
clas3 of questions which present themselves relate to 
the principles which determine the actual mode in 
which, at any time and in any countiy, the distribution 
of the task of Government between the Central and the 
Local Authorities ought to be effected. 

It is necessary, at the outset, to remove a certain 
ambiguity which attaches to the terra Centralisation, an 
ambiguity which the late Mr. John Austin did his best 
to explain and get rid of in an article specially devoted 



290 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

to the subject in the number of the Edinburgh 
Review for January 1847. 

The term Centralisation may be used merely to de- 
scribe certain constitutional arrangements by which the 
central government is brought into direct connexion 
with all local authorities throughout the country, and 
is able to make its power felt to the utmost extremities 
of the land with the smallest loss of time or energy 
occasioned by the interposition of intermediate agencies. 
The word in this sense means nothing either good or 
bad. The system of government implied by the word 
may be compatible either with a very large amount of 
local independence or with a very small amount of it. 
It only means that inasmuch as all local authority is, 
in theory, subordinate to the central authority, the 
dependence of the one on the other is not weakened 
by the accidental or artificial intervention of official 
obstacles of a purely mechanical sort. The structure 
of the whole government, if it be likened to a machine, 
is so perfectly constructed that wherever the hand of 
the central agency is entitled to exert itself, there it 
can exert itself at once and effectually without loss of 
power from interruptions or needless friction. 

In the other sense of the term Centralisation^ it 
means that which the person who uses it wishes thereby 
to condemn as politically vicious. He implies, in using 
the term, that the government of which he speaks has 
drawn into its own hands so large a part of the direct 
forces of control and administration that local autho- 
rities have no free play. They are hampered and 
arrested at eveiy point. Local officials, like the French 
Mayors under the Second Empire, are the nominees of 
the sovereign power ; all the details of executive work 



MEANINGS OF CENTRALISATION. 291 

in the smallest village, town, or district, are supervised 
and checked by a system of incessant inspection ; one 
uniform body of rules for education, for sanitary control, 
and even for the regulation of the use of libraries, 
parks, and public institutions of all sorts, is imposed 
from above, and not the smallest deviation is allowed 
even when dictated by varieties of climate or of ancestral 
practice. The whole population is governed like the 
army, and precision, uniformity, and submission are 
purchased at the expense of the free national life. This 
is the system ^vhich is most favourable to an autocratic 
government, such as that of Napoleon III., of Augustus, 
and of Diocletian, and of the British Government in 
India. It enables the central authority to feel the 
pulse of the people from moment to moment, to check 
disaffection even before it has manifested itself, to secure 
the return to the popular Assembly of a disproportionate 
number of its own creatures, to give to its more de- 
monstrative acts and manifestoes an outward show of 
popularity, and, in the case of actual insurrection, to 
repress it with concentrated energy. 

Nevertheless, history is fuU of instances, from the 
days of the Csesars to those of the Napoleons, of the 
real instability of centralised government of this sort. 
The very unity of mind and spirit which, expresses itself 
in every act and institution and the real simplicity of 
the political organisation lead to the instant imputa- 
tion of every national check and disaster to the Govern- 
ment, while it makes the entire removal of a dynasty, 
or the change in the succession, or the substitution 
of a fresh body of ministers, alarmingly easy. The 
bureaucratic efficiency of the government mechanism 
is shown to be independent of all merely personal 



292 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

considerations. Any amount of cliange can be risked 
without fear of prolonged disorder or anarcliy. 

After the defeat of Sedan, the republic of M. Thiers 
instantly stepped into the place of the Empire of the 
defeated captive, and the smallest possible shock to the 
constitution was experienced from the change. There 
is an advantage in this species of stability; but it 
is not the sort of advantage which autocratic rulers 
seek for themselves ; and it is purchased for the country 
by the loss of the sense of independence, and by the im- 
position of a tyrannical uniformity which forces all local 
arrangements into an unyielding Procrustean type. 

In determining on the principles applicable to the 
construction of a system of local Government, a deci- 
sion has to be arrived at on the following points : — 

(1) The Distribution of Work to be done by the 
Central and by the Local Government. 

(2) The Distribution of Workers. 

(3) The Modes of connexion between the Central 
and the Local Work and Workers. 

(1) The principles on which work has to be dis- 
tributed between the central and the local authorities 
will be best evolved by setting over against each other 
the characteristic advantages of local free government 
and those of the enforced uniformity which comes from 
the superposition of a higher authority. Of course it 
is not necessary for the argument that the regulations 
imposed by a central authority should be uniform for 
all parts of the country, but they must not fail to be 
uniform in policy and in spirit; and generally speak- 
ing, for the mere sake of economising time and labour, 



CENTRALISATION AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 293 

all directions appertaining to the same class of matters, 
and wliicli come from a central authority, will be 
monotonously identical for all parts of the country. 

The characteristic advantages of local independence 
in the matter of government are that the persons who 
legislate have an ever present, and often life-long, 
knowledge of the persons, things, and facts, of the most 
exact and detailed sort, to an extent which no persons 
living at a distance can ever rival. Furthermore, local 
legislators and administrators are able to watch with 
minute and incessant vigilance over the operation of 
their own regulations, and are able to change, supersede, 
or supplement them, or derogate from them from one 
short period to another with a facility and propriety 
which cannot be attained by even the most omniscient 
and sagacious of central governments. 

Again, in respect of taxation, for many local pur- 
poses, there is the greatest advantage in visibly con- 
necting in the popular mind the necessity for the tax 
with the fact of its exaction. Thus it is well for people 
clearly to understand that if they grudge a poor-tax 
they must bestir themselves to remove poverty from 
their midst. If they want good roads, or the luxury 
of a free library, or parks, or public gardens, it is they, 
and not some indefinite class of persons somewhere else, 
who must make sacrifices to obtain them. 

Lastly, there are many matters, — especially those 
touching on the private, religious and moral life of the 
people, — in respect of which a natural and proper sen- 
sibility indisposes them to conform to any dispositions 
in the public interest the true policy of which they 
do not thoroughly understand. A local debate in a 
vestry or common-council hall, a discussion in the local 



294 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

papers, and free conversation at all places of public 
resort, gradually tend to bring out the true merits and 
issues of a really complex measure. When once it is 
understood, more than half the obstacles to carrying it 
through are out of the way, and the probability of its 
being thoroughly and loyally complied with is vastly 
increased. 

These arguments in favour of committing to local 
Authority a very large share of independent legislation 
of a particular kind, when stated together, are so 
forcible, that it would almost seem that local govern- 
ment might one day absorb the large mass of all legis- 
lation. It will be seen, however, that these advantages 
of local legislation are not without serious drawbacks 
which, if they do not wholly impair its value, at least 
largely restrict the topics to which it is properly 
applicable. 

One chief objection to all local legislation is that it 
is not likely to be undertaken in what may be called a 
true political spirit. This means that the area, at the 
largest, — being yet, by the hypothesis, less than that of 
the State itself, — is insufficient to call into existence 
that conscientious sentiment towards posterity, in 
respect of similar surrounding areas, and in respect of 
the corporate requirements of the State as a whole, 
which is the essential characteristic of the true states- 
man. For the creation and nurturing of such senti- 
ments, not only is the local area wanting in size, in 
self-dependent distinctiveness, and in continuity of tradi- 
tions, but the only available legislators are too few and 
are likely to be drawn, for the most part, from too little 
cultivated a class, to generate such sentiments among 
themselves. 



GOOD AND EVIL OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 295 

These remarks apply least of all to the case of 
capital towns iii which, — as in the case of London, 
Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Paris, 
and New York, — the local government, even when at 
its worst, may sin in a statesmanlike way, and, at its 
best, has done acts of true and memorable states- 
manship. 

Again, there is the further vice attaching to all local 
government which is due to some of the very advantages 
which have just been enumerated. If it be true that the 
legislators and those legislated for are at one in being 
wide awake to the necessity for, and to the effect of, a 
tax or of a severe regulation, it is also true that the 
direct and immediate interests of all concerned tend to 
cover the whole legislative vista. Every one becomes 
accustomed to calculate with precision his own exact 
loss and gain by each measure, and the result is that a 
utilitarianism of the narrowest kind swallows up all 
higher and broader political methods. 

The local mana gement of poor-law nnions in London 
has been, within recent years, a scandal of selfish ad- 
ministration ; and if the recently instituted School 
Boards throughout the country have exhibited a higher 
standard of public sentiment, it is because the domestic 
instincts of the members have, in this respect, specially 
educated them to a higher moral sensitiveness than 
that which responds to nothing better than a sharply 
apprehended balance of profit and loss. 

Lastly, in respect of certain matters there is an 
advantage in uniformity which is a counterpoise to 
many of the undoubted benefits which belong to local 
independence. Every traveller appreciates the advan- 
tage of the consolidation of the German Empire by 



296 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

which the necessity of showing passports, the use of 
diflPereiit currencies, the examination of baggage at the 
frontiers, and the interrupted postal and railway service 
have been put an end to. 

On a smaller scale, local independence means an 
amount of local heterogeneity which is an obstacle to 
social convenience and to the free and simple progress 
of trade. It means, besides, the want on the part of 
the central government of that facility for obtaining 
instant information, and for making prompt adminis- 
trative changes, on which at certain crises public order 
and security may depend for their maintenance. 

Furthermore, through the variety of rules and 
practices which local freedom introduces there are 
all the losses which come from excessive friction 
at moments when co-operation is needed for strictly 
national ends, and all the increased expense and possible 
extravagance which are due to a number of tentative 
efforts on a small scale in the place of one highly 
organised effort on the largest scale. It is true that it 
is difiicult to check the expenditure of any Govern- 
ment ; but it is not much more hard to expose financial 
excesses committed on a large scale than those com- 
mitted on a small one, and when once it is done, the 
whole country is relieved at once, instead of the opera- 
tion having, by possibility^ to be repeated for every 
centre of local administration. 

The condition of the poor-law administration in 
England, before the introduction of what was known 
as the ' New Poor Law ^ in 1834, illustrates some of 
the social and political disadvantages of an exagge- 
rated attachment to local government. Owing to the 
smallness of the administrative area, a struggle was 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 297 

always going on between adjoining parishes to avoid 
being burdened by each other's poor ; and it was inevi- 
table that a law, itself economically condemned, should 
be executed in a spirit wholly unaffected by broad con- 
siderations of national policy. The remedy introduced 
was to enlarge the area, to secure uniformity in the 
administration of a law, itself largely amended, and 
especially to bring the reconstituted local authority 
into direct and constant connexion with the central 
government. 

In pronouncing a judgment, then, on the class of 
matters which can alone with advantage be left to a 
local authority, it is evident that a statesman will refuse 
to hand over to such subordinate legislatures all the 
affairs in which the characteristic defects of local rule are 
likely to be exhibited in the most prominent form. He 
will, at the same time, reserve to the central authority 
all those departments of government in which the 
requirements of uniformity, despatch, economic organi- 
sation, and efficiency of provision, and vindication of 
national character, are more important than a deference 
to local taste and peculiarities. 

In applying these principles in detail, it appears at 
once that a certain class of matters scarcely involve 
political considerations of a broad kind at all, nor do 
they in any significant degree touch the national 
character. Nor is it of much importance, either finan- 
cially or as a matter of social organisation, that the 
regulations appertaining to them should be uniform. 
At the same time it may be of importance that the 
regulations should be popular, well-understood by those 
concerned, and easily modified from time to time with- 
out involving too wide-reaching changes. 



298 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

Such matters are (1) sanitary arrangements, — in- 
cluding under tliis head all that relates to the healthful 
enjoyment of life and not merely to the prevention or cure 
of disease ; (2) all that relates to the artistic embellish- 
ment of a town or of a village, — including the construc- 
tion of public buildings, the improvement of streets, 
and the restraint of eccentricity in the fashioning of 
private houses ; (3) all that relates to the education and 
mental training and occupation of the people, reserv- 
ing it, however, to the central government to insist on a 
certain minimum of education being enforced universally 
in every part of the country ; (4) all that relates to the 
necessary conditions of industrial and commercial life, 
such as the provision or superintendence of market- 
places, cattle-markets, bridges, roads, water-supply, 
lighting, and, in some districts, canals. This is not 
intended, by any means, as an exhaustive list either 
of a positive or of a negative kind. It is only illus- 
trative of the principles laid down. 

On the corresponding principles, the central govern- 
ment will reserve to itself such matters as the general 
superintendence of the main means of locomotion and 
communication throughout the country, the enforce- 
ment of its own methods of general taxation, the 
manipulation of the currency, and, of course, the 
administration of Justice in all but the humblest 
departments of it. 

The most difficult and pressing problem as to the 
relations of the central and local government con- 
cerns the Police. In this case all the arguments in 
favour both of central and of local control are at their 
strongest; and the only solution is by distributing 
the control between the central and local authorities. 



ENGLISH METEOPOLITAN POLICE. 299 

Public liberty is endangered by nothing more than by 
a highly centralised police system wholly out of corre- 
spondence and relationship to the local magistracy. It 
is at the same time necessary, for tracking out crime and 
carrying out comprehensive legislation in an uniform 
way, to attain the highest possible unity in police 
management and mutual understanding. 

In England, indeed, a large portion of the liberties 
of the people are due to the fact that the maintenance 
of order has — up to quite recent times and to the era 
of the modern Metropolitan Police Acts, — been always 
entrusted to a local constabulary having its centres in 
the parish, the borough, or the county. The result was 
that the local magistracy who appointed, managed, and 
dismissed the constables, had them entirely under their 
control, and could prevent any excesses of official zeal. 
The magistrates themselves, of course, were always 
directly subjected, in such matters, to the censure of 
that public opinion which was nearest and, therefore, 
most stringent. 

Considering the importance of the police being a 
popular force and of the people willingly co-operating 
with them in case of need, it is a misfortune where, 
merely in pursuit of a higher amount of organisation, 
the people are habitually pitted against the police. 
This is more likely to be the case when the police 
are introduced from without than when they are nomi- 
nated from within ; when they are only believed to be 
subject to an unknown and indefinite authority at a 
distance, instead of being obviously responsible to 
magistrates or a town-council close at hand ; when 
they are seen and known to share the common sym- 
pathies and even prejudices of the neighbourhood in 



300 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

whicli they liave been brought up, instead of being, or 
seeming to be, alien in all their sentiments and ante- 
cedents. 

Another topic, in relation to the distribution of 
work between the central and local authorities, which 
has, of late years, excited much interest in England and 
America, is that of the liquor traffic. It is claimed, in 
some quarters, that the right of restricting or of abso- 
lutely preventing the sale of spirituous liquors should 
be put into the hands of local authorities, even though, 
for the purpose of such subordinate legislation, the 
authority were constituted in such a way as to require 
the concurrence of some number of householders ex- 
ceeding the bare majority. In behalf of this demand 
it is alleged that the amount of the local poor-law, 
sanitary, and penal charges due directly to drunkenness 
invest those wIlo directly suffer from these charges with 
the moral right and the political claim to be free to 
agree to remove the causes of drunkenness out of the 
way by absolutely forbidding, within the district, the 
sale of intoxicating liquors. 

The only replies to this forcibly worded argument 
are that the right to sell spirituous liquors is one which 
may be regulated but cannot be wholly abrogated with- 
out an undue assault on public liberty ; that the wrong- 
doing of some is no excuse for abridging the indepen- 
dence of all, even with the consent of a large proportion 
of them ; and that this is one of the matters in which 
extreme inconvenience and some disorder would be 
encountered by having a different practice in two 
adjoining districts. 

It is difficult to deny that, where drunkenness does 
really exist to an extent which obviously aggravates the 



LIQUOR LAWS. 301 

local taxation and imposes other disagreeable burdens, 
the sober part of the population ought to have a 
remedy ; and that the remedy proposed is an obvious 
and easy one. If the restricting* law were carefully 
worded, it would have the advantage of being so far 
elastic that it could only be applied when the evil was 
so great that the great bulk of the inhabitants did not 
hesitate to apply it, and the mere threat of applying 
it might of itself bring suflBcient pressure to bear on 
the authority which grants the licences to sell. It is 
said that in countries where such laws exist they either 
become a dead letter or are immorally evaded by all 
persons concerned. The possibility of such a conse- 
quence has to be avoided, and, it would appear, could 
easily be avoided by affording frequent opportunities 
for the will of the people to be ascertained. 

Another expedient for the purpose of reducing the 
sale of intoxicating drinks which has recently been 
advocated is that of the Local Authority, such as a 
Town Council, purchasing all the public-houses, and 
vested rights of sale attaching to them, and constituting 
itself the sole dealer in intoxicating liquors within the 
district. The political objection to this measure is that, 
inasmuch as the Local Authority cannot afford to lose 
by the speculation, though it might be content not to 
make much or any profit, it always would have a certain 
interest in the maintenance of habits of drinking in- 
toxicating liquors. The interest may be ever so small, 
but it is there. In times of financial difiiculty there 
will always be found a party who will demand, in place 
of aggravated taxation, improved receipts from the 
liquor-houses. Sometimes this policy will be acquiesced 

in, and the scandal will be manifested of the Govern^ 
U 



302 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

ment itself fostering habits of intoxication with one 
hand and punishing the offences of drunkards with the 
other. 

It has already been seen that an exception to the 
general propositions here laid down has occasionally to 
be made in the case of towns, especially those which 
are large and densely populated. The only genuine 
experiments in true Local Government made by the 
Romans were those exhibited in the free towns or 
Municipiay in which the resident inhabitants enjoyed at 
once all the advantages of self-government and corporate 
independence, without losing any of their rights as 
Roman citizens. 

But in the ancient world the methods of loco- 
motion and of communication were too little advanced 
to admit of the full problems of Local Government 
being propounded ; nor in the free towns of the 
Middle Ages in Italy and Germany could these special 
problems emerge, owing to the want of an effective 
Central Government. The problem of Local Govern- 
ment as applied to towns is, in fact, a new one, inas- 
much as never till now have towns attained such size, 
such commercial importance, and such density of popu- 
lation, without seriously encroaching on the force of 
the central government. 

It is only in the exceptional and, probably, transitory 
circumstances of the United States that towns like San 
Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Chicago, — owing to their 
distance from the seat of the Central Government and 
the intermittent communication (rapid as that already 
is), — secure to themselves an amount of autonomy which 
is not always compatible with the interests, or even with 



LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN TOWNS. 303 

the character, of the American nation as a whole. In 
fact the difficulty of bringing these active but distant 
centres of political, as well as of commercial, activity 
into constant harmony with the will of the Union, as 
represented in Congress, is one of the most pressing pro- 
blems with which the United States have to deal. It 
may be solved, of itself, by the rapid increase of popula- 
tion and the multiplication of towns of all sizes and de- 
grees of importance, which will operate as uninterrupted 
links in the chain of communication and of political 
interest and sympathy. Or it may have to be solved by 
some re-constitution of the Union which will create 
large provincial areas of Government, sufficient in 
extent to satisfy the demands created by peculiarities of 
climate and condition but not large enough to foster 
ambitious proclivities or to promote rivalries with the 
Central Government. Such areas would, in fact, corre- 
spond to the provinces of the Canadian Confederation. 
Looking to the future in Europe, the problem of the 
growth of towns is a sufficiently difficult and anxious 
one. It is probable that the progress of education and 
of commerce will enhance the attractions of town life, 
and diffuse the appreciation of them, while, in many 
countries, the multiplication and enlargements of fac- 
tories will continue to maintain and produce a conges- 
tion of population in towns new or old. The only 
compensation for these tendencies will be found in the 
leisure that comes of accumulated capital, and the in- 
dulgence in country occupations and tastes w^hicli will 
result from it. The greater division of labour, and the 
practice of free-trade principles, also operate in the 
direction of the abolition of agriculture as a general 
means of livelihood in countries having no special 



304 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

advantages for its profitable pursuit, and of tlie re- 
striction of tlie population of villages and of the smaller 
towns. 

It may thus be expected that in many countries of 
Europe, and, not least, in England, the problem of the 
Local Government of towns will become the most ab- 
sorbing, if not the most embarrassing, of all political 
problems. It will, however, be found in one respect 
easier than the problem of Local Grovernment in less in- 
telligent and less well populated regions of the country. 
It may always be expected that in a town of a certain 
magnitude there will be found a, considerable number 
of persons gifted with a genuine political spirit and 
conforming themselves to a high standard of moiul re- 
sponsibility. In many towns the available knowledge 
and skill will be found superior to much which is at the 
service of the Central Government in the capital. 

In the older towns and villages (as those of the 
United States which soon attain to what is for this 
purpose a venerable antiquity) lofty traditions and sen- 
timental associations of a stirring kind acquire an ever 
increasing hold on the imagination of each successive 
generation, which is of the highest service to the states- 
man who has to deal with it. He has the finest 
elements of human nature in its proper social develop- 
ment to deal with. He can always appeal with confi- 
dence to an overwhelming majority of the townsmen, 
whenever the supreme interests of public safety, order, 
or honour, entitle him to expect a more than usual 
amount of individual sacrifice or more than common 
co-operation. The very conditions of social and com- 
mercial life, the publicity of such life, the value set on 
personal credit, the sincerity which comes from all real 



CENTRAL AND LOCAL GOVEllNMENT. 305 

interests being habitually evaluated in exact money's 
worth, the very impatience with the conditions which 
turns so much of existence into a calculation, and the 
desire to escape from them at every fit opportunity, — 
are all the finest material for the judicious statesman 
to handle. 

Whatever lethargy, selfish indolence, or slow creep- 
ing corruption, may do in the less densely inhabited 
parts of the country to drag it down, the true statesman 
will ever be able to find in the dense manufacturing or 
trading towns of the country a response to his patriotic 
appeal, and to elicit the means of national recovery. 

(2.) The question of the distribution of the workers, 
as distinguished from that of the work, between the 
Central and the Local Government can only be answered 
by referring to the actual circumstances of the country 
concerned. The obvious answer to give is that the 
task of central government will be performed by the 
members of the popular or other Assemblies which con- 
stitute the Legislature from among whom the members 
of the Executive will (under most constitutions) be 
largely chosen. Tn addition to them other persons, 
habitually resident at the seat of government, may be 
specially designated for Executive tasks in connexion 
with the central government. Of course some of the 
residents at the seat of government will be occupied 
with the Local Government of the capital town which 
usually forms that seat. 

Similarly, those who engage in the task of Local 
Government will be residents dwelling on the spot. As 
society progresses, and the different areas of Local 
Government are brought nearer together, and the 



306 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

habits of locomotion increase, it will be found more and 
more diflB-Cult, even where desirable, to insist on any 
tests of actual residence and even of habitual residence. 
Both in towns and country places the local franchise 
will be determined, as it was in the earlier days of the 
towns of Europe, by the fact of being held liable to 
contribute to the local burdens ; and this liability will 
be practically ascertained by the fact of profiting from 
the produce of them. There are always a certain 
number of persons who habitually benefit from a closed 
market, an Exchange, well paved and lighted streets, a 
fund and organisation for the relief of urgent cases of 
distress, and from that indefinite use of social con- 
veniences which is roughly indicated merely by being 
a householder. These persons then properly form the 
body of local taxpayers, and thereby constitute the local 
electoral constituency. The constituency may either be 
the same for all offices, as when a Town Council is elected 
by the ratepayers of the town and the Town Council 
delegates its several functions to special boards, or those 
who are taxed for a special object may form a distinct 
constituency for electing the Board to carry out that 
object. It is needless here to dwell further on the 
various principles of election which may be adopted. 

(3.) The modes of connexion between the central 
and local work and workers suggest some questions 
of considerable importance, because, while some con- 
nexion must be maintained in order to prevent pure 
autonomy, which may mean anarchy, the nature and 
extent of the connexion may determine whether there 
is real local Government or whether it exists only in 
name. 



LOCAL BOARDS. 307 

The most recent inventioa, on this subject, in 
England, is that of a special department of the central 
executive authority, denominated the ' Local Govern- 
ment Board,' the functions of which are to maintain 
constant correspondence with Local Boards all over the 
countr}^; to provide for their due election in cases which 
seem to call for it and yet in which the people are 
lethargic or divided in opinion ; and to supervise the 
action of such Governments so far as the claims of the 
Central Government, or of financial security and of 
justice, seem to call for it. 

It is not the object of this invention to supersede 
the functions of the Local Board in respect of initiating 
improvements, or to override the views of the people 
on the spot in matters within their competence. This 
Central Board is, in fact, a mere extension of what 
was foiTuerly the Poor Law Board, and it has also 
assumed to itself the functions of a Board of Health. 
It may thus be taken as a characteristic specimen of 
one mode of connexion between the Central and the 
Local Governments. The range, however, of this 
Board is limited; and it occupies itself mainly with 
^ sanitary ' matters, in a large sense of the term, and 
with the administration of the Poor Laws. 

The large department of Municipal Government is 
only indirectly affected by the institution of a Local 
Government Board. In many countries the Central 
Government does its best to retain in its own hands the 
election of the Mayor, and some of the most scandalous 
abuses of electoral corruption and fraud exhibited 
during the reign of Napoleon III. in France came from 
this cause. In Enofland the ri^ijht of the citizens of 
London to elect their own Ma}' or was one of the earliest 



308 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

and most cherished liberties wrung from the Norman 
Kings through their financial dependence on the rich 
municipality. In modern times, English towns having 
corporate institutions have retained something more 
than the right to elect all their civic functionaries. 
They have succeeded, many of them, in almost escaping 
all central control. 

The Municipal Corporation Act, passed in 1835, 
defined the modes of election of all the officers of the 
corporations which adopted it ; but many have not yet 
adopted it, and the City of London was not contem- 
plated in its provisions. By this Act the Town Council 
was forbidden, except by approval of the Lords of the 
Treasury, to sell or mortgage the land or public stock 
of the Borough or to demise them for more than a 
certain time. The accounts of the Town Council were 
to be at all times open to inspection, and to be regularly 
audited and printed for the use of the ratepayers. They 
w^ere, furthermore, to be submitted to the Secretary of 
State and laid by him before both Houses of Parliament. 
The terms of the local franchise were laid down with 
the greatest precision. 

It may be observed that in such a case as this 
the central government reserves to itself the right to 
interfere negatively and for preventive purposes. So 
far as rights of making minor internal regulations go, 
of taxing themselves, and of expending the product of 
the taxes, the Town Council is wholly unfettered from 
without. It is difficult to conceive a more independent 
form of Local Government, a due connexion with the 
Central Government being none the less retained. 

One mode of enforcing the claims of the central 
government w^hich has been resorted to is that em- 



CONSTITUTION 01'^ THE JbKENCII SENATE. 309 

ployed in England in tlie government of Poor Law 
Unions, in wliicli certain special officers, such as ' in- 
spectors/ ^ collectors,' and ' assistant overseers,' are 
either nominated by the central authority or have in 
cases of special emergency or necessity, of which the 
Local Government Board has become cognisant, to be 
elected according to rules prescribed by law, and in 
conformity with the arrangements made by the Board. 

Another specimen of modes of maintaining the 
connexion between a Central Authority and Local 
Authority is supplied by the constitution of the French 
Senate, which awards a certain number of seats to the 
representatives of communes and municipalities. The 
communes and municipalities each elect, by a majority 
of their members, one of a body or college of electors ; 
and these in their turn choose the senators. 225 of 
the whole 300 Senators are elected in this T\'ay, and 
75, that is a third of them, retire every three years. 

This mode of representation was no doubt suggested 
by the practice of electing the Senate of the United 
States, which is, pre-eminently, a representative Assembly 
of the Governments of the component States of the 
Union, the Legislature of each State of the Union 
electing two members for six years. The rapid changes 
which the United States are undergoing must render it 
uncertain for a long time to come how far an electoral 
practice, originally dictated solely by ideas of confedera- 
tion, will be found consistent with the notion, which is 
succeeding to it, of centralisation modified by great 
independence in Local Government. If this form of the 
constitution is permanent, it will bo a remarkable 
instance of the most complete harmony being main- 
tained between central and local institutions, without 



310 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

loss eitlier to local independence or to the claimtj of 
uniformity. 

Both in England and in the United States the 
circuit judiciary system has always done much to over- 
come the centrifugal influences of local institutions ; 
and it is one of the current signs of the close approxima- 
tion to each other of all parts of the country in England, 
— which means the restriction of the sphere of Local 
Government, — that the County Court, the Quarter or 
Borough Sessions, and the Metropolitan superior Civil 
and Criminal Courts, are year by year making fresh in- 
roads into the ancient province of the County Assizes. 



311 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES. 

It has already been pointed out that the subject of the 
Government of Dependencies has to be distinguished, 
on more grounds than one, from that of Local Govern- 
ment, though it is not always easy, as a matter of 
practical application, to determine which subject is con- 
cerned, and though there are many principles of Govern- 
ment which are equally applicable to both subjects. In 
ancient times the physical conditions of the civilised 
world scarcely admitted of the existence of true local 
government, though the administration of the Roman 
free towns very nearly amounts to it. In modern times 
the rapid means of communication tend to convert all 
provincial, federal, and colonial administration into 
special problems of local government. Nevertheless, 
there will always be certain conditions in which the 
relations between a State and some remote but con- 
nected parts of it are such that, in some respects, it is 
necessary to concede a greater amount of independence, 
and in others a less amount, than comports with the 
true notion of local government. 

In modern times the occasions for investigation of 
the principles applicable to the Government of Depen- 
dencies are of two descriptions, and of two descriptions 
only. The question is one of colonisation either con- 



312 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

ducted in an uninliabited country or in a country only 
inhabited by uncivilised and unsettled races ; or it is a 
question of the acquisition of territory ah^eady populated 
by civilised races, though of a race, religion, language, 
and form of culture more or less different from those of 
the acquiring State. 

The first is the case of the British Australian Colo- 
nies and of the original Colonial settlements in the part 
of North America now occupied by the United States. 
The second is the case of the Canadian Confederation, 
the British Colonies in South Africa, British India, and 
the French Colony of Algiers. 

It thus appears that the topic of the Government 
of Dependencies has the highest possible interest for 
England ; and, though France and even Germany are 
said to be desirous of acquiring extended colonial pos- 
sessions for the sake of disposing of their surplus popu- 
lation, yet there is no prospect of any State ever again 
acquiring such an extent of colonial and subject terri- 
tory as is included in Australia, British India, and 
Canada. England may lose part, but it is singularly 
improbable that any other single State will ever gain 
as much. 

There have been two notable attempts made in the 
history of the world to govern dependencies, and they 
both signally failed, either through the political back- 
wardness of the age in which the attempt was made, or 
through the reckless neglect of principles which were 
theoretically acknowledged. These two attempts were 
that of the Roman Empire to govern its provinces, and 
that of England to govern the thirteen American 
colonies. 

It was the accident and misfortune of Rome, rather 



KOIVIAN ANNEXATION OF PKOVlNClvS. 313 

than the proinptiiigs of aiiibition, which led to the 
successive annexations of provinces beyond the limits 
within which the political resources of the period ad- 
mitted of their being governed by a single Power. The 
story of Rome is that of a commercial State, led on by the 
necessities of securing quiet, first to occupy Italy, and 
then to secure Italy by expelling the Carthaginians from 
Sicily ; then to win a province in Africa and in Spain, 
as a mere consequence of the necessity to crush the 
maritime rivalry of Carthage ; then to add successively 
Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria, and fresh African 
provinces, merely for the purpose of securing already 
acquired territories against the invasions of such enter- 
prising patriots as Pyrrhus, Mithridates, Antiochus, and 
Jugurtha, and to reinstate order and quiet. The same 
was the tale in Germany, Gaul, and Britain, till the 
Empire was founded, and the same work of forced and 
incessant annexation went on, — sometimes at the price 
of such desperate reverses as those at the hands of the 
Parthians and the Persians. Augustus is said to have 
left to his descendants a warning not to extend the 
bounds of the Empire further, and his successors fully 
appreciated the danger. But it was more difficult to 
govern without further conquest than it had been to 
conquer in order to govern. 

There is no more interesting or instructive subject 
of political study than the government of the Roman 
provinces ; and the numerous inscriptions that have 
lately been brought to light have done much to illus- 
trate a subject which, from the comparative barbarism 
of many of the countries concerned, has but few his- 
torical monuments. 

Undoubtedly the general intentions disclosed in the 



314 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

E-oman Provincial policy were good and wise. The 
Eomans appreciated to the full the advantages of not 
interfering with the native institutions and habits of 
the people more than the necessities of public order 
required. They took immense pains not only to secure 
the regular, prompt, and impartial administration of 
justice, but to promote appeals to the Central Govern- 
ment against the decrees of the Provincial judges. 
They displayed much political adroitness in preventing 
combinations among large groups of subject people by 
attaching the different provinces and towns to the 
Central Government by a great variety of different ties 
and privileges. Hence, as there was no identity of 
sentiment having its roots in a monotonous cen- 
tralisation, universal simultaneous insurrection was 
impossible. 

But there were two obstacles to the success of 
Roman Provincial Government which proved insupera- 
ble, in spite of genuine efforts to withstand them. One 
of these obstacles was due to the time and circum- 
stances of the world at and amidst which a premature 
experiment in governing widely scattered races of men 
was made. The other obstacle was due to the mis- 
fortunes and shortcomings of the Eoman State itself. 

The obstacle which belonged to the time and cir- 
cumstances was that created by the primitive savagery 
of most of the races which constituted the several 
provinces, coupled with the absence of sufficient means 
of ready communication with the Central Government. 
These races, indeed, occasionally produced noble and 
courageous leaders, and sometimes, as in the case of 
Sertorius of Spain, patriots gifted with a true political 
sagacity. But, for the most part, the virtues even of 



GOA^ERNMENT OF TKE ROMAN PROVINCES. 315 

the best men and races, from the Pillars of Hercules to 
the Euphrates, were of the harsh kind which belongs 
to a warlike and not to a political condition of society. 
The Gauls were the most advanced, and it was with 
them that the Roman Provincial Government was most 
successful. 

The other obstacle was the impoverishment of the 
Roman State, which not only prevented the Govern- 
ment from adequately remunerating their Provincial 
Governors and so putting them beyond temptation, but 
made the acquisition of revenue from the Provinces a 
far too prominent object in all their policy. 

The result of these two hindrances acting in concert 
was, that the case most frequently (though, happily, 
not quite universally) presented was that of a grasping 
Proconsul administering his province for no other 
purpose than, first, the enrichment of himself, and 
secondly, the securing of such a revenue as might 
satisfy the expectations of his employers. The general 
brutality of the people and their remoteness from the 
Roman centre of civilisation permanently excluded 
them from such influence on the part of their conquerors 
as might have gradually brought about amalgamation 
between the races. 

In some parts of the Empire, where the races were 
in an advanced stage, or were of the best type, as in 
Egypt, Gaul, Germany, Britain, Spain, and Greece, 
some little progress was made in Romanising the pro- 
vinces, or at least in making the Roman rule congenial 
and acceptable. But in other parts, as in the provinces 
near the Danube, in Asia Minor, in the lands bordering 
on the Euphrates, in Africa (excej)ting Egypt), and 
even, in Syria, the Provincial history of Rome is little 



316 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

else than a long narrative of conspiracies, insurrections, 
military enterprises, and, as often as not, disastrous 
Imperial calamities. 

The experience of England in the government of 
her American colonies was of an entirely different 
character, though equally illustrative of the nature of 
the problem concerned. The thirteen American colonies 
were constituted of persons of the same race as those 
inhabiting the parent country ; and so far were the 
colonists from beino^ below the averao^e standard of 
moral and intellectual cultivation in their old home, that 
they were above it. The original immigrating stock 
consisted of those who, — considering their exceptional 
commercial and industrial energy, peculiar fortitude in 
grappling with physical obstacles, or rare conscien- 
tiousness in preferring banishment to the want of 
religious freedom, — may be presumed to have surpassed, 
in the most valuable qualities, the great mass of their 
English contemporaries. But their great distance from 
the seat of central government, — a distance far greater, 
for all political purposes, at that day than the distance 
of the Australasian colonies from England now, — 
rendered all true government from England an im- 
possibility. 

Owing, however, to specially favourable circum- 
stances, it took some two hundred years to disclose the 
futility of the political connexion between the mother 
country and the colonies. These circumstances were 
the orderl}' and constitutionally trained habits of the 
colonists ; the excellent provisions which were generally 
contained in the charters of the colonies and which 
communicated, in a compact and definite form, all the 



ENGLAND AND HER AMERICAN COLONIES. 317 

most cherished and liberal institutions which had been 
developed in England ; and the spontaneous arrange- 
ments made by the colonies themselves from time to 
time in the direction of partial confederation and self- 
government on an ever larger and larger scale. 

So long as Navigation Laws prevailed which not 
only confined commerce with England to British ships, 
but otherwise largely restricted the trade of the colonies 
with any other country than England, and so long as 
the commercial policy of all countries was that of a 
jealous protection of native and colonial produce, the 
possession of Colonies must have been, on the whole, 
economically profitable to the mother country. From 
such gains, the expenses of maintaining a large, efficient, 
and ubiquitous navy, and of occasionally conducting a 
land war for Colonial defence, ought to be deducted. 

But, in spite of the economic advantages of colonial 
possessions, especially when magnified by slave labour, 
it cannot be said that the governing policy of England 
in respect of her colonies was that of obtaining from 
them the utmost pecuniary profit. The ties which 
bound England to her Colonies in America were those 
of genuine sentiment and of blood relationship, and it 
is a mistaken view of the War of Independence to 
suppose that the prominent thought on one side was 
that of acquiring revenue and on the other that of 
escaping fiscal burdens. The whole history of that 
conflict, both on its social and on its constitutional side, 
demonstrates that there were, deep down in the breasts 
of the colonists and in those of the dominant political 
party in England, sentiments of pique, of personal irrita- 
tion, and even of vindictiveness, which had their roots 
far more in a consciousness of outraged and yet inde- 



318 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

struetible relationship than in the mere crossing of 
economical interests. 

Some intelligent Americans of the present day have 
given it as their opinion that the true offence of 
England which brought about the war was not the 
mere claim to tax the colonies for Imperial purposes, 
but the mode in which it was attempted to impose 
the tax, by violating the colonial constitution which, — 
owing, in a great measure, to the apathy of England, — 
had gradually evolved itself during the past two hundred 
years. This constitution was based partly on local 
government, partly on a system of confederation. In 
imposing a stamp tax by a mere fiat of the British 
Parliament, without deferring to colonial rights of 
self-assessment, the British Government was violating 
a relationship which had acquired all the fixity and 
dignity of constitutional prescription. 

The real grounds for the breach with the American 
colonies have such a close connexion with new colonial 
problems, and the precedent is always so readily cited 
in the case of any serious controversy between England 
and one of her colonies, that it is important that there 
should be no misapprehension on the subject. The 
teaching involved in the precedent is not that colonies 
ought never to be required to contribute to the general 
expenses of the central Home Government, and still less 
that, if they are so required, it is their right and duty 
instantly to revolt from their connexion with the mother 
country. The true lesson rather is that while, on the 
one hand, a merely selfish use of great dependencies for 
purposes of revenue was shown by the Roman precedent 
to be incompatible with any stability in political 
organisation, the English precedent in America shows 



ORIGIN OF BRITISH RULE IN INDIA. 319 

that mere indifference to, and, still more, an ignorant or 
contemptuous encroacliment on, time-honoured political 
institutions must entail either the anarchy of dissolu- 
tion or the pangs of forced separation. 

The Government of the great dependency of India 
for a hundred years by the East India Company, acting 
under a succession of Charters from the English Govern- 
ment and acting therefore as its agent, illustrates, 
though in a more agreeable way, some other important 
doctrines relative to the government of Dependencies. 
The English settlement in India presents the peculiar 
case of a colonisation (if so it can be called) begun for 
one purpose, and continued for a wholly different, if 
not opposed, class of purposes. 

At first the sole purpose was that of forming an 
mtrepot of trade at an Indian port, where Oriental 
products could be collected from the interior and re- 
packed with a view to their being distributed among 
European countries. But a flourishing and expanding 
trade of this sort, first of all needed political securities 
for the unhampered conduct of its own operations and 
against spasmodic breaches of civil order in the vicinity 
of the commercial settlement ; and, secondly, it brought 
rivals from other European countries into the field, and 
so raised up special political complications. The history 
of the political and military efforts to protect their 
commerce against the consequences of internal disorder, 
and against foreign rivalry, is the histor}^ of the English 
in India from Clive to Lord Canning. 

The government of India by the East India Com- 
pany presents, in many respects, a favourable contrast 
to that of the government of the Roman provinces, and 



320 I^SE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

of the American colonies. The problem was certainly 
as great as that which lay before Rome. The countries 
were won either by the sword or by pacific engage- 
ments with autocratic governments without any simula- 
tion of popular consent. The general condition of the 
people, so far as political attainments went, was back- 
ward in the extreme ; and their language, religion, and 
race differed widely from that of their conquerors. 
Furthermore, the actual and direct agent of govern- 
ment, the East India Company, was essentially a 
trading association representing numerous shareholders 
whose prime concern must have been, in average cases, 
the safety and improvement of their investments. Thus 
the inducements to sacrifice political to economical 
considerations might seem to have been scarcely less 
than those of the pauperised Government of Imperial 
Eome. 

In the face, however, of all these difficulties, and in 
spite of temptations to a sordid abuse of financial respon- 
sibilities, the result of the hundred years' possession of 
British India by the English has been the gradual sub- 
stitution of a wide-reaching and stable political relation- 
ship for a casual commercial link ; the establishment of 
perpetual internal peace and order; the severe main- 
tenance of religious toleration ; the enormous industrial 
development of the country ; and (except in some fana- 
tical and irrepressibly wild sections of the population) 
general political content. This is not intended as an 
optimistic view of the position of the English in India. 
Every one know* there has been, and is still, abundauu 
ground there for seasonable criticisms ; and the poli- 
tical responsibility of the English Government does not 
end with simply keeping at a distance Powers which 



POLICY OF ANNEXATION. 821 

mio-ht compete witli itself for supremacy, nor even with 
reducing tlie periodic famines and secnring the material 
well-being of the people. Higher and ulterior objects 
must be increasingly recognised ; and when once they 
are recognised, there is good ground for hoping that 
they will be pursued as unintermittently and attained 
as successfully as the lower objects already reached. 

It will serve as a guide to the true principles 
applicable to the Government of Dependencies to reflect 
on the objects which it may be supposed a State has in 
view in retaining or in acquiring dependencies and 
colonies, and on the real advantages and disadvantages 
which attach to such possessions. 

It is not necessary to say much on the mere national 
prestige which at one time formed one of the main 
attractions of an extended dominion, and which, even 
at this day, retains some of its glamour. By this time, 
however, historical and, still more, economical know- 
ledo^e has sown a wide distrust of mere breadth of 
empire, apart from special considerations which give 
it value. If there is always a fever of annexation pre- 
vailing in some sections of a national community, there 
are other sections quite as strongly in favour of surren- 
dering what has been already won or even long held. 
Extent of topographical area is being more and more 
valued for what it is really worth — that is, for the oppor- 
tunity it gives to national expansion and to the increased 
means of support it supplies to a growing population, 
Avho are thereby saved from the necessity of seeking in 
foreign countries, and perhaps among institutions less 
congenial than their own^ a refuge and a home. 

The mere glory of extended empire belongs especi- 



322 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

ally to the Middle Age monarchical regime. The utter 
and felt inadequacy of ancient constitutions to grapple 
with the class of problems now being considered pre- 
vented a sense of spurious magnificence deluding the 
Ancient in the same way in which it deludes much of the 
Modern world. It is probably the feudal system which 
has associated so deeply, in the minds both of monarchs 
and of people, the notion that breadth of territory means 
power and wealth. It is becoming better recognised 
that, often enough, it means only weakness and im- 
poverishment. 

Up to a certain point indeed, as in the case of 
modern Greece, a certain amount of good cultivable 
area of land is needed to supply the primary elements 
of political self-support and independence ; and, again, 
up to a certain but different point, the laj'ger the area 
of cultivable land, especially when found under different 
climatic condition, the richer and more independent, 
and consequently the more powerful, the State. But 
beyond this point, extent of area may mean the disin- 
tegration and scattering of the population, bad and 
superficial agriculture, want of sufficient concentration 
in towns and connected political centres, intricate 
problems of local or colonial government, expense for 
defence and for the maintenance of civil order, and dis- 
proportionately small returns in the way of revenue. 

Such is often the condition of a new country, 
though, — as in the case of Australia and Canada, — 
a compensation is obtained in the superior energy of a 
population suddenly plunged into now conditions of 
life, and in the immense returns from some unexhausted 
but not inexhaustible sources of wealth. But even 
now the large pastoral ranges in Australia, while they 



VALUE OF EXTENT OF TERRITORY. 323 

afford enormous fortunes to individual settlers, are far 
from being a pure economical or political advantage to 
the colonies themselves. If agriculture is thwarted, if 
towns are retarded in their growth, and if the accumu- 
lated fortunes are removed out of the country, it does 
not appear how, at present, the vast territories of the 
Australian colonies are other than an obstruction to 
their development. 

The case of Russia, though it is not a new country 
in the same sense, is a parallel one. It is difficult, 
however, as yet to draw any profitable conclusions from 
it, inasmuch as the recent emancipation of the serfs, 
followed, perhaps, hereafter by the growth of a true 
middle class, may prove that its tei'ritories, in Europe 
at least, are not incommensurate with the national 
resources for turning them to the fullest account. But, 
so far as its Asiatic territories go, it may be expected 
that, but for some fortuitous combination of circum- 
stances which cannot as yet be predicted, its width 
of Empire will prove its weakness rather than its 
strength. 

A more legitimate object, already adverted to, in 
acquiring extended territorial possessions, is that of pro- 
viding a field for Emigration. This is a topic which, in 
view of the limitation of the area of the older European 
States and the growth of population, has of late been 
acquiring an importance of the first magnitude ; and it 
is from the point of view of prospective emigration on 
an ever increasing scale, that the subject of the methods 
of governing dependencies is becoming proportionately 
interesting. 

The modern reasons for treating Emigrntion as a 



324 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

subject of political concern are different from those 
wliich. prevailed either in the ancient world or at any 
period in the history of the modern world earlier than 
the present century. Before the present century, Emi- 
gration and that which included it,— Colonisations- 
were rather the indulgence of a taste, or, at the most, 
the consequence of some momentary social pressure or 
congestion. Or, perhaps, it may have been a recog- 
nised avenue to wealth for which, as in the case of the 
Spanish American settlements, exceptional opportunities 
suddenly presented themselves. 

It is only quite recently that emigration and 
attendant colonisation have been treated as one of 
the natural, and almost indispensable, outlets for an 
overflowing population. It might always have been 
anticipated that the strict geographical limits of most 
European States must become too narrow for the sup- 
port of their population, so soon as the habit of engaging 
in internecine conflicts ceased to be perpetual, and in 
proportion as improved methods of existence at once 
increased the number of births and reduced the death- 
rate. The growth of factory labour on a stupendous scale, 
and superior skill and energy in cultivating the soil, 
have done much to counteract this pressure of the popu- 
lation against the bars of their territorial prison. 

But where, — as in Ireland, — factories have not ab- 
sorbed the surplus labour and, from one cause and 
another, physical, political, or moral, the culture of the 
soil has come to a standstill, the necessity for provid- 
ing means of existence for a redundantly prolific popu- 
lation has been felt in all its force. The occurrence of 
famines, which are rather symptoms than exceptional 
accidents, brought the problem to a head, and the 



EMIGRATION POLICY. 325 

result was sucli a stream of emigration from Ireland 
as, within some ten years, reduced the population 
from eight to five millions. 

It is well known that thouorh some of these emiOTants 
went to the Australian colonies, and some to Canada, 
yet a yery large proportion betook themselves to the 
United States, and have since become an element of no 
small political importance both to their new Govern- 
ment and to the Government of Great Britain. In 
fact, the perplexities which this wholesale emigration 
of a dissatisfied population to a foreign country have 
caused in the political world are an instructive illus- 
tration of some doctrines which apply to emigration 
generally as a topic of political concern. 

It is the misfortune of England that, in spite of the 
enormous and unprecedented colonial territory which 
her people have settled and are populating, there are 
scarcely more than two colonies — that is. New Zealand 
and South Australia — which from the first have been 
settled with reference to broad and enduring principles 
of economy and public policy. Ordinarily speaking, the 
colonial policy of the country has been left entirely to the 
hap-hazard accident and claims of the moment, or else to 
the idiosyncrasies of some individual Minister of State. 

When it was a question of getting rid of surplus 
population, facilities were contrived for shipping emi- 
grants away to distant shores, with little care where 
they went to, or what became of them. When it was a 
question of occupying new territory, convicts and the 
progeny of convicts, and the associates of convicts, had 
every facility provided them for laying the foundations 
of the future State, and considerations of personal 
character, internal organisation^ and political capacity 
15 



326 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

were thrown to tlie winds. It is these initial disasters 
which it is so hard to repair ; though it may still be 
hoped that the constant renewal of the population by 
fresh immigration, and the potency of constitutional 
government, coupled with better understood i^rinciples of 
economical and social organisation, will combine to con- 
stitute new points of favourable departure. 

The same necessity of promoting emigration for the 
mere purpose of providing an outlet for a population 
which is overpassing the territorial capacities of the 
State is already pressing, as never before, on Continental 
States such as France, Germany, and Italy, and, in 
many affairs, affects their political action. This is 
being especially felt in the eager competition which has 
been going on for the last few years for the territories of 
the North African sea-board which are so congenial to 
European settlers. But it is also manifested in the 
novel phenomena of the occupation, or attempted occu- 
pation, by Continental States of islands in the southern 
seas. 

One diflBculty in all emigration schemes is that, 
except at such conspicuous national crises as that pre- 
sented in the Irish famines, when all the usual bonds of 
society are momentarily relaxed, the classes who are most 
disposed to emigrate and who form the best colonists 
are just those classes whom, from the point of view of 
internal policy, it is most desirable to keep at home. 
Nor will even the progress and diffusion of education 
and public grants for purposes of emigration improve 
this slate of things, so long as so little pains is taken to 
organise emigration at home, and to devise measures for 
more adequately meeting the moral, as well as the 
material, exigencies of the colonists in their new home. 



COLONISATION. 327 

The prevalent notion of colonisation is that it 
is a means of individual security against poverty, and 
possibly of self- enrichment and aggrandisement. But 
an appeal based on such a notion can only reach the 
more enterprising and independent members of society, 
— those who from physical health, acquired capital, or 
special skill, know that they can stand alone without 
the support of a complex social edifice all around them. 
Those who are not more enterprising and independent 
than the average of mankind are, as things are, right 
to shrink from removing to a colony. 

Even in the best administered modern colonies the 
utmost that is, — or, according to existing arrangements, 
can be, — done for a new-comer or a family of new- 
comers is to supply them with food and shelter while 
they are waiting for work, to help them towards the 
obtaining of that work, and possibly, if the work fails, 
to help them over a period of struggle and anxiety and 
find for them fresh work. Beyond this, they have to 
fit themselves into an active, forward-pressing, yet 
imperfectly organised, society as best they may. They 
may find friends ready made, a place for their own form 
of worship, religious guides, and familiar institutions, 
or they may not. In the remoter parts of the country, 
of course, they cannot find these things, and they are 
scarcely less alone and thrown on their own resources 
than the original settlers. 

Those who are content with a system of colonisation 
of this sort both underrate the moral and political con- 
ditions by which men live, and ignore the respon- 
sibility of the State in respect of the population which, 
in pursuance of the general welfare, it, practically, 
deports from its shores. The poorer and the less well 



328 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

educated members of society who, by Ibe nature of the 
case, would emigrate with most advantage to the home 
country can, less than any other class, dispense with the 
ubiquitous presence of all those moral and political con- 
ditions which fold them round from their birth, and 
which serve to elevate in the scale of humanity the 
most insignificant and destitute of men. These condi- 
tions have been the product of ages of struggle and 
evolution, while they are connected in the subtlest of 
ways with places and personal memories and visible 
associations which can never be transplanted elsewhere. 
The absence of these brings on that " home-sickness '^ 
which, from the days of Ovid to those of the last trans- 
ported convict, is no sentimental appetite but a deep 
and genuine hunger for the first necessaries of human 
existence. This craving for home passes away indeed, 
but it is disguised and blunted without being appeased 
or transmuted into anything better. 

The State which finds it politically convenient to 
disembarrass itself year by year of thousands of the 
population it has called into being has no right to hide 
from itself the terrible temptations and difficulties to 
which life away from home will expose its outcasts, nor 
to flinch, indolently, from its duties in respect of them. 
In ancient days, there was scarcely a more solemn tie 
than that which bound a colony to its parent State ; 
and if it be true that a colony then was not the same 
as a colony now, the difference is one which casts a 
heavier burden now than of old on the parent State. 
Then it was a voluntary departure of an enthusiastic 
and highly organised few, rather recalling the Pilgrim 
Fathers than the modern emigrant ship. Now it is the 
enforced disruption of countless family and social ties. 



I 



PRINCIPLES OF COLONISATION. 329 

and the exclusion of those who fail in the race at home, 
simply in order to secure ease and plenty to those who 
are allowed to stay behind. The least that the State, 
in such an emergency, can do is to extend its protecting 
and organising hand even to the most distant parts of 
the earth, if it may be, in order to ensure the reception 
of its outcasts in a worthy and true home. 

This view of the duties of a State towards its emigrant 
j^opulations throws some light on a class of problems 
as^ to the relations of a parent State with its Colonies 
which in recent times have attracted much attention. 
It demonstrates, for instance, that a State has no right 
to treat it as a matter of indifference whether its people 
emigrate to its own colonies or elsewhere. It is not a 
question of national vanity in respect of the amount of 
enumerated population, nor a question of ecenomical 
interest in respect of the continued maintenance of 
profitable relations between the State and its prosperous 
colonies. It is a question how far the State has fulfilled 
its duties to its people when it indolently allows or 
encourages them to commit themselves and their for- 
tunes to the care of alien people and institutions over 
which their own father- State has no control. 

The prevalent laxity of relationship, and still more the 
prevalent ideas as to the essential laxity of relationship, 
between a State and its colonies, are, indeed, making such 
considerations as these seem irrelevant anachronisms. 
But it may be that they are anachronisms only because 
their time has not yet come, rather than because their 
time is gone by. It may happen, indeed, as it has long 
happened with Germany and, in some measure, with 
France, that there is emigration without proportionate 
opportunities for colonisation, and that, consequently, 



330 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

the emigrants must necessarily pass under a new 
dominion. But, even in this case, it is possible for the 
parent State to acknowledge its continuing duties to 
its emigrants, and, — both in securing for them a proper 
reception, and in obtaining guarantees for their civil 
rights and independence,— to avail itself to the utter- 
most of its diplomatic resources. 

Another consequence of this view of the responsi- 
bilities of a State is that it should not be treated as a 
matter of indifference and of mere accidental taste or 
caprice on the part of a colony whether it is to continue 
to form part of the parent State or not. Of late years, 
and, in some measure, as a consequence of the abolition 
of restrictions on colonial trade, a reaction has set in 
against that spirit of attaching the colonies, at any 
hazard, to the parent State which precipitated the 
American War of Independence. 

It is being argued, in some quarters, that a modern 
State receives little economical benefit from its colonies, 
and such as it does receive it would procm-e from them 
equally if they were politically independent, or even if 
they were subjected to a foreign State. It is alleged 
that the expense of protecting distant colonial pos- 
sessions is a serious drain on the resources of the people 
at home, while the constant risk of losing them hampers 
political international relations in far more important 
respects. It is also urged, on grounds the general truth 
of which has been already admitted, that mere extent 
of territory is no proof of real power or dignity, and 
that, by scattering the population, and by opening out 
endless facilities for escaping from liabilities to the 
central Government, it may be a cause and a sign of 
national decay. 



RETENTION OE COLONIES. 331 

I'o all these arguments it is sufiRcient to reply that, 
although a time may come at which the necessities 
for absolute colonial independence exceed those for a 
continuance of the political connexion between the 
State and its colonies, till that time has come, the 
parent State is bound to treat the connexion as one of 
the utmost importance and value. No one could now 
deny that the time has gone by for attempting to fasten 
a colony to its parent State by any other hooks than 
those of moral obligation, reciprocal interest, and mutual 
affection. But this is very different from admitting 
either that the connexion is one of a wholly indifferent 
sort, or that its continuance or severance ought to be 
determined by nothing else than the casual freak of a 
particular generation of colonists. The mere admission 
of the frailty of the relationship tends to propagate 
freaks in the same way that free doctrines of divorce, 
which, while establishing marriage as a matter of senti- 
ment and interest, impair the practice as resting on 
reciprocal moral duties. 

Inasmuch, then, as the colonies of a State form 
that part of the national territory to which, implicitly 
or explicitly, it invites its surplus population to betake 
themselves, or has in past times invited them, it behoves 
the State to do its utmost, within the limits of political 
prudence, to retain its colonial territories generally 
within its own control, and to exercise control by pro- 
viding such institutions as may best tend to obviate the 
disadvantages of isolation and banishment. Of course 
such a policy is not only compatible with, but demands, 
the speedy generation of self-governing institutions of 
a kind to effectually supersede interference from the 
central Government at home. 



332 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

In proportion to the largeness of the colonial area, 
the distance from home, and the importance of the 
issues requiring prompt and irresponsible determination, 
the delegated powers must far exceed in magnitude 
those which belong to Local Government at home. 
At the present day even customs-duties are regarded 
as belonging to the region of colonial freedom, and it 
is only as to questions of colonial defence that the 
Central Government has absolutely reserved to itself 
the initiative in any one department of administration. 
It is to be regretted that, with respect to the great 
Australasian and Canadian groups of colonies, which 
are so important from an emigration point of view, 
England has only reserved to herself a negative con- 
trol exercised through the Governor appointed by the 
executive authority at home and responsible only to it. 

The distance of the Australasian colonies and the 
propinquity and attractive force of the United States in 
the case of the Canadian Dominion would, in any case, 
render constant intervention from England peculiarly 
diflBcult. But if the practice of intervention had never, 
in deference to false analogies between local and 
colonial independence and under the haunting memory 
of the breach with the thirteen American Colonies, been 
abandoned, it would not have been found insupportable. 
Indeed, it would, when exercised in behalf of emigrants 
and the children and grandchildren of emigrants to 
whom the parent State owed a lasting debt, have been 
seen to be founded in reason and justice. 

It has, however, been admitted that a time may 
come when the question of separation from the parent 
State seriously presents itself. It has yet to be seen 
how far a substitute for actual separation will be found 



FUTLJIIE OF THE BRITISH COLONIES. 333 

in the erection of great and nearly independent Con- 
fedeiutions such as that which has already been formed 
in North America and legislatively provided for in 
South Africa. Nothing but further experience, for 
which the world must wait, can decide whether such 
a colonial system as that of England will continue 
much as it is now ; or will resolve itself into a multitude 
of independent States of the type of the present States 
of Europe ; or will be transformed into new political 
units in which England will simply preside over an 
aggregate of co-equal communities, in somewhat the 
way in which Prussia has a certain precedence in the 
constitution of the German Empire. 

Nevertheless the case is more clear in respect of 
countries like British India, in which, through a series 
of fortuitous circumstances, England has been called to 
govern a population of alien race, language, and customs, 
out of all numerical proportion to the English residing 
in the country. In such a case, the duties of Govern- 
ment can neither be ignored nor re^iigned nor transferred. 
They are a trust for a coming generation and for a new 
age. Every opportunity must be taken, as it is being 
taken in practice more and more, to habituate the 
native population to the duties of self-government and 
to prepare them for a time when the imposed and alien 
rule can prudently be first relaxed, then shared, and 
finally withdrawn. 

Between the obvious case of prospective inde- 
pendence because the inhabitants can never amalgamate 
with their rulers, and the equally obvious case of the 
possible independence of the Australasian and North 
American colonies because of the identity of race and 
attainments between the inhabitants of the Colonies and 



334 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

those of the Mother Countr}^, there are the mixed cases 
of the Cape Colonies, of the West India Colonies, and 
of foreign settlements such as Hong-Kong, Malta, 
Gibraltar, and Aden, retained only for purely commer- 
cial or military objects. The questions appertaining to 
these several cases will probably be found more soluble 
than they were when selfish economical doctrines, now 
obsolete, and vainglorious military sentiments, favoured 
the retention of colonial possessions at any expense to 
the legitimate national pride of other countries, and 
even when they cost more than the maintenance of 
them was worth. 

There are two questions relative to the general 
subject, not altogether of a speculative nature, which 
have attracted some interest of late, and which may 
hereafter assume a practical importance. One question 
is, whether the principle and machinery of direct repre- 
sentation are available in the government of an extended 
Colonial Empire. The other question is, whether in 
anj" novel form of extended confederation w^hich may 
be adopted, it wall be possible to draw, in advance, a 
permanent line of separation between the legislative or 
administrative topics of mainly local concern, and those 
which either ought to be treated in an uniform manner 
for all the parts of the system, or which, at the least, 
ought not to be treated in one part independently of 
reference to the interests of all the other parts. 

The two classes of obstacles in the way of the 
extension to a vast colonial empire of the principles 
of representative government, are, first, those due 
to the inevitable delay occasioned by distance, and, 
secondly, those due to the presumed incompetency of 



COLONIAL REPEESENTATION. 335 

a representative of a remote colony to take part in 
legislation for otlier colonies and for the Empire as a 
whole. 

The essence of representative government, as now 
applied in all constitutionally governed countries, is, 
that each deputy, though specially conversant (it may 
be) with the wants of a particular area of territory 
and section of the population, is none the less held to 
represent the nation as a whole, and is bound to legislate 
for the good of the whole, while seeing that the interests 
of his own constituents are neither misunderstood nor 
overlooked. 

Even in Assemblies which have most of the Federal 
character and, historically at least, have been based 
on Federal institutions in the past, — such as the Legis- 
latures of the Swiss Confederation and of the German 
Empire and the United States Senate, — this is the fixed 
constitutional doctrine. The members are reputed to 
be not merely delegates bound each to contend for the 
claims of his own constituents at any cost. They are 
rather statesmen, enjoying, indeed, the special con- 
fidence of a definite portion of the population of the 
State, peculiarly cognisant of its situation and needs, 
and bound to advocate its proper interests. But they 
are none the less responsible to the country at large, 
as well as to their own constituents, for the general 
government of the country in the interests of all, by 
the subordination of what is small to what is great;, 
of the few to the many, and, it may be, of what is 
lasting in the future to what is only an ephemeral, 
though conspicuous, advantage in the present. 

This theory of representative government has existed 
in England from the early days when the House of 



336 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

Commons, as a condition of its assent, on behalf of 
tlie constituencies, to grants of subsidies, insisted on 
concerning itself with the conduct of the general 
government and on obtaining remedies for general 
grievances. Indeed this spirit of subordinating the 
personal to the general interest, and of connecting the 
demands of special classes with the common policy, may- 
be traced back at least as far as the action of the 
Barons at Eunnymede. The latest and most profound 
exhibition of the same doctrines is found in the re- 
sistance made by Edmund Burke against attempts in 
his own constituency of Bristol to convert him from a 
representative into a delegate. 

The same conception of representative government 
has travelled into all continental legislatures, and may 
now be treated as of the essence of what is understood 
by that form of government. It constitutes, in fact, its 
main ground of distinction from true federal govern- 
ment, as was found in the various attempts at con- 
federacy made by the thirteen American Colonies before 
the establishment of the existing constitution of the 
United States. 

But for representative government of this sort, it is 
indispensable that each deputy should have sufficient 
opportunities to inform himself of the circumstances of 
other parts of the national dominions besides that w^hich 
he specially personates ; that he should have leisure, 
skill, and disposition to avail himself of these opportu- 
nities ; and that there be sufficient correspondence in the 
needs and circumstances of all parts of the dominions 
represented in the same Assembly for time not to be 
unduly wasted nor energy dissipated in bringing all 
the diverse peculiarities of opposite regions adequately 



REPJIESENTATION OF COLONIES. 337 

under the notice of the general legislature. The case 
of the French, German, and Italian Cantons of Switzer- 
land (the last across the Alps) probably marks the limit 
of possibility with respect to satisfying these con- 
ditions ; though the representation of States so remote 
from each other as California, Virginia, and New 
York in the United States Congress, and, still more, the 
representation of Algiers and other Colonial possessions 
of France in the French Chambers, would seem to go 
beyond this limit. 

Nevertheless, neither the Italian Cantons of Switzer- 
land, nor California, nor Algiers, present such differ- 
ences of needs and position, coupled with such remote- 
ness from the more geographically integral parts of the 
national dominions to which they respectively belong, 
as do the Australasian, and even the South African and 
the Canadian, colonies of Great Britain. It is not so 
much that a colonial-born deputy from one of these 
colonies could not easily master all the political ques- 
tions which immediately concern Englishmen at home, 
and might not give as just and impartial a judgment 
upon them as an Englishman, as that he would not 
seem to be doing this in the eyes of the English people 
at home ; nor could he do this efficiently without pro- 
portionately sacrificing the claims of his own colony 
on his time and attention ; while, at the same time, 
the representatives of English constituencies could only 
master the political circumstances of all the Colonies 
represented by similarly sacrificing the claims of their 
own constituents. 

The only alternative would be that of having a 
special Assembly formed exclusively of colonial repre- 
sentatives, which would, at least, have the advantage 



338 THE SCIENCE OF POLITieS. 

of securing attention to colonial needs and would aflFord 
an intermediate agency for sifting them and for grouping 
them and bringing them into relation with each other 
before the debate in the central Legislature. 

What is here said is, of course, no disparagement to 
the suggestion that the colonies should be represented, 
simply for the purpose of imparting information to the 
central Legislature, something in the way in which 
organised territories, not yet erected into ^ States,' are 
represented in the United States House of Represen- 
tatives by ^ delegates,' who have a limited right to 
debate without a right to vote. It may be noted, inci- 
dentally, that in two territories, Wyoming and Utah, 
the franchise for the election of these delegates extends 
to women. 

If the colonial dominions of Great Britain assumed 
the form of a confederacy (and even to the extent to 
which they tend towards the assumption of such a form 
— as they certainly do now — ), it becomes a prominent 
question how far Colonial can be separated from what 
are sometimes called Imperial concerns. Attempts have 
already been made in such embryonic confederacies 
as those of North America and of South Africa to 
settle a list of topics for which the central colonial 
Legislature is alone competent, and another list of 
topics left to the determination of the provincial Legis- 
latures. 

But, outside lists of this sort there must be a third 
list of topics in respect of which only the central Legis- 
lature of all is competent, — be that body the Parliament 
of Great Britain, or be it some new federal body of 
representatives, or of delegates, which time may call 
into beinof. 



GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES. 339 

It seems to be admitted that if a common foreign 
policy is indispensable to maintaining unity in the 
organisation, the cost and administration of the Army 
and Navy beyond the point needed to maintain internal 
order and, perhaps, protection against marauding 
native tribes, is a matter of common and not of private 
concern. On the other hand, customs-laws and com- 
mercial regulations are recognised as of private and not 
of common concern. It' may be presumed that the 
utmost pains would be taken to promote the formation 
of a common criminal code, admitting, possibly, a few 
local peculiarities adjusted to national habits, a common 
procedure, and the utmost facilities in bringing crimi- 
nals to justice. 

With respect to the conduct of great public works 
between colony and colony, or in which two or a few 
colonies have some preponderant interest, the arrange- 
ments and distribution of the expense would lie outside 
the cognisance of the supreme Legislature, unless some 
universal interests were also at stake. Nevertheless 
that legislature would always be available for the pur- 
pose of supplying the needful organisation or, in case 
of dispute, facilitating settlement by voluntary arbitra- 
tion. It need not be said that international, postal, tele- 
graphic, and locomotive arrangements generally would 
properly fall under the control of the central Legis- 
lature. 

Before leaving the subject of the Government of 
Dependencies, some special remarks must be made on 
the peculiar case of British India, which has already 
been referred to from an historical point of view. This 
subject can only belong to Scientific Politics (which 



340 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

deals with universal principles) so far as universal prin- 
ciples are implicated. 

But such principles are directly concerned in an- 
swering the question whether a large dependency, — 
requiring for its Government the special knowledge 
and attainments required by those who govern, or 
affect to govern, a people so ancient, gifted with so 
rare a form of civilisation, and so remote in lano:ua2:e, 
religion, and temperament from their rulers, — can 
be justly and wisely governed by a popular Legisla- 
ture, elected for quite different purposes, in a country 
thousands of miles away. The question, when thus 
put in the abstract, can only have a negative answer ; 
and it was some such answer as this which the late Mr. 
John Stuart Mill (who, equally with his father, had an 
exceptional knowledge of Indian administration) made 
to the question when it was proposed to transfer the 
direct government of India from the East India 
Company to the Crown, — that is, to ministers of the 
Crown chosen and supervised by the House of Com- 
mons. 

Later experience has gone far to justify Mr. Mill's 
answer, because the House of Commons has shown 
an amount of indifference to the good government of 
the great dependency which could hardly have been 
expected ; and, step by step, the preservatives, at first 
legislatively provided through the medium of the Indian 
Council, against undue concentration of power in the 
hands of the Central Executive Authority, — that is, of 
the Secretary of State for India and the Cabinet, — have 
been removed one by one. An almost irresponsible 
Secretary of State has been substituted for the Directors 
of a Company, themselves having special knowledge. 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA. 341 

and being directly responsible to an intelligent and 
keenly critical body of interested shareholders. 

No doubt, in theory, the new state of things is 
better than the old, and it was an anomaly for one of 
the most important possessions of the Crown to be 
administered, in peace and in war, by a commercial 
company, only indirectly controlled by the supreme 
government. Possibly the only remedy is to be found 
in the mode already becoming too prevalent, that of 
wars, famines, and commercial losses, which bring home 
to the popular imagination the truth that the duties 
of Government cannot be neglected without early and 
condign punishment. 

In such a case the best services that an unskilled 
body of popular representatives, sitting at a vast 
distance from the scene of action, can render, are to 
secure fitting governors on the spot, to insist on their 
accountability to itself, and to exact statements of the 
condition of the revenue at such periods as may afiPord 
ample time for consideration and discussion. It is 
almost certain that misgovernment will disclose itself 
at an early stage through the medium of finance, and 
now, as of old, it will be through its right of inspecting 
and checking a common-place balance-sheet that the 
House of Commons will most effectually exert its con- 
stitutional authority, and lift the scrutiny up to a higher 
and nobler platform. 



342 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

FOREIGN RELATIONS. 

It needs but a superficial glance at the altered consti- 
tutional condition, and the change in mutual relation- 
ships of the leading States of the world during the 
present century, and even during the last half centurj^, 
to be assured that a new era in international policy has 
been entered on, of a kind to which history presents no 
parallel. 

How far this era is an exceptional and transitory 
one, destined, in a shorter or longer time, to give 
way to unexpected developments, there are, of course, 
few materials for judging. There is, however, this 
promise in favour of stability for so much as seems 
good and desirable in the new state of things, that 
each modification which has taken place, if looked 
at singly by itself, results rather from the removal 
of artificial fetters than from the adoption of artificial 
institutions. Each modification harmonises with the 
marks of human progress in individual, domestic, and 
social life. It purports, on the face of it, to be 
^ natural ' in the only true sense of that word, that is, 
being in conformity with the trained and fully developed 
nature of man as a social being. 

In searching, then, for those principles in politics 
which are lasting, ubiquitous and independent of 



CAUSES OF WAR SINCE 1815. 343 

arbitrary interference by rulers or statesmen, it may 
be expected that a brief review of the sort of changes 
which have passed over the international relations of 
the chief European States since the Congress of Vienna 
may exhibit the direction and force of tendencies still at 
work. These, if scientific foresight be not disappointed 
by some new and unlooked-for development, may be 
treated as supplying the laws of political motion in the 
future. 

The settlement resulting from the Congress of 
Vienna, and expressed in the Treaty of Paris of 1814 
and its contemporary Annexes, was based not on the 
interests, — from a national point of view, — of the popu- 
lations concerned, nor, — still less,— from any transcen- 
dental consideration for the claims of justice and right, 
but solely on the necessity for making such a compromise 
of pressing claims as might seem likely to secure the 
longest duration of peace. 

The main causes of war in Europe during the past 
fifty years were traceable to the dislocation of the 
German Empire as a barrier against France ; the 
facilities which, first, the centralised French monarchy 
and then the imperfectly organised Republic afforded 
to military enterprises and the rise of military ad- 
venturers ; the weakness of Austria as the recognised 
leader of Germany ; and the want of tenacity in the 
constitutions of the smaller States which rendered them 
too easily subservient to an invader or to intriguing 
diplomatists. 

In spite of all the cross-purposes, personal aims, and 
diplomatic designs of a sinister kind, of which the 
memoirs and despatches of the great diplomatists, — 
especially the representatives of Austria, France, and 



344 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

England, are full, — the assemblage of Treaties wliich 
constitute what is usually known as the Treaty of Paris 
certainly succeeded in doing away with these causes of 
war ; and it is no small credit to the arrangement not 
only that peace endured for forty years after it, but 
that when it was first broken by the Crimean War, the 
cause was the misgovernment of Turkey, followed by 
the aggressions of Russia, — a cause not provided for 
by the Treaty, — while the succeeding series of wars for 
the aggrandisement of Prussia and the depression of 
Austria were waged in direct reversal of the policy of 
the Treaty, in consequence of a change of circumstances 
since its date. 

Nor is it true, as is often said, that that Treaty had 
been so often set at nought that it was, forty years 
afterwards, treated as if it were not in existence. 

Considering what intractable, and at the same time 
soluble, material the Treaty dealt with at the moment 
of the greatest exhaustion of the States concerned, when 
peace and order were peremptory necessities, it is ex- 
traordinary how durable the arrangements of the Treaty 
were. It is no discredit to an arrangement made for 
the purpose merely of ascertaining existing legal rela- 
tions and rights, and consolidating a status quo at one 
epoch, if within half a century the political pendulum 
has made a fresh oscillation and the preponderating 
forces have passed from one side to another. 

New dangers were indeed beginning soon after the 
settlement was made ; but they came, not from the 
infirmity of the settlement itself, nor from doubts as to 
the original wisdom of its provisions, but from a number 
of social and moral causes soon destined to reflect 
themselves on the political mirror with a clearness for 



DOCTEINE OF NATION.iLITY. 345 

which statesmen had not been prepared by previous 
experience. 

The secondary influence of the ideas and aspirations 
set free in France and Germany, — many of the soberest 
of which England had long before incorporated, for 
herself and the United States, in a constitutional form, 
— told with silent though sure rapidity in France 
herself under her reinstated monarchy, in Italy, and in 
Germany. 

Another idea traceable to a different origin, but of 
potency equal to that of the revolutionary doctrines of 
France, proved a momentous ally of these latter. This 
was the doctrine of Nationality. It was an idea which 
when once broached, and especially when allied with a 
growing apprehension of the rights of Protestant inde- 
pendence, was fatal to the dominion of Austria on the 
other side of the Alps, and of the Bourbons in Naples, 
as well as to the ascendency of Catholic Austria over 
Protestant Prussia and Northern Germany. 

The solution was obtained through the partly astute, 
partly knight-errant, and partly corrupt, policy of 
France, in the hands, for the time, of that same dynasty 
which it was one main aim of the Treaty of Paris to 
exclude for ever from the throne. There remained the 
final controversy between the two final aspirants for 
European leadership ; and it was emphatically decided, 
for the time, in favour of Prnssia, and of what was 
immediately erected into the ' German Empire.' 

Such have been the outward movements of States 
since the settlement of the Treaty of Paris ; and it is 
to be noted that, while military in form, they have 
been less determined by such superficial causes as 
dynastical ambition, religious fanaticism, or complicated 



346 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

statecraft, than any corresponding movements in times 
past. 

The wars of the third quarter of the nineteenth 
century, beginning with the Crimean war, and ending 
with the Kusso-Turkish war, have not been mainly if at 
all due to far-sighted apprehensions of a change in the 
balance of power; nor to antipathy of Protestant to 
Catholic, of Catholic to Orthodox, of Christian to 
Mussulman ; nor to the mere personal ambition of the 
King of Prussia to be dubbed an Emperor, or of the 
Princes of Servia and Eoumania to be crowned Kings ; 
nor to the covetous desire of Savoy and Nice by France, 
or of Lombardy by Italy; nor even to a momentary 
freak or personal necessity on the part of Napoleon III., 
leading him to distract the attention of his people by a 
popular war. All such motives have been hitherto the 
sole ones in the case of all European wars which have 
not strictly fallen under the head of wars of Inde- 
pendence ; and it is well known that one or another of 
these motives ,did enter into the consideration of those 
who were responsible for the wars which have just led 
to the reconstitution of the central European States. 
But what is important to notice is that in the case 
of all these wars, national, social or religious feelings 
of a rational kind, — diffused in each case throughout 
the whole extent of the population, — were for the first 
time appealed to. These were in fact the causes which 
alone rendered the wars possible, and in every case 
determined their success on the side of national inde- 
pendence and progress. 

The least progressive State of Europe, — Austro- 
Hungary — has suffered most. Next to her, the greatest 
sufferer was France, who was in danger of bartering her 



NEW PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIP. 347 

dearly-won republican spirit and institutions for mili- 
tary glory and the glitter of an Empire. Italy, Prussia, 
and the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire — 
all of which were representatives both of a strict and 
broadly diflused sentiment of nationality and of the 
cause, not of religious fanaticism or antipathy, but of 
religious freedom, — have gained most. 

The reconstitution of Europe on such a new and 
apparently sound basis has been accompanied, as might 
have been anticipated, by certain novelties in the 
principles and conduct of international relationships 
which connote the enlarged functions now performed 
by the population of States, as contrasted with the 
limited concern in such, matters conceded to the peoj)le 
by the professional diplomatist of former days. 

One novelty is a certain modification in the strict- 
ness of the older doctrine as to the independence of 
every true State and the equality of all States to each 
other. The doctrine of the Independence of States 
was, indeed, always subject to considerable qualifications 
from the feudal relationships which frequently existed 
between the sovereign monarchs of different States. 
But, nevertheless, the definite legal character of the 
feudal tie and the feudal obligations rather tended to 
intensify the distinction between State and State than 
to obliterate or weaken it. 

There was brought about in the States of con- 
tinental Europe a general substitution of constitutional 
and popular government for the system of government 
prevailing at the time of the Congre^ss of Yienna, 
which was based solely on antique and spontaneously 
vanishing dynastical assumptions. This substitution 
favoured the demolition of a notion of independence 



348 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

of a narrowly legal kind, resting rather on a sentiment 
of isolation and mutual distrust than on the true needs 
of uninterrupted national existence. 

In fact, the advance of popular Government, and 
the proportionately increased interest which the mass of 
the population now take in questions of foreign politics 
and in international relationships, have tended to in- 
crease the political dependence of State on State. No 
doubt such theories as that of the ' Balance of Power ' 
and the systematic policy of grouping States togethei 
on principles traditionally handed down through genera- 
tions of statesmen, tended to call into existence a vast 
number of treaties of alliance, of marriage, of succession, 
of partition, and for the settlement of disputed claims 
which had, as their offspring, a vast assemblage of 
mutual obligations of a complicated and usually em- 
barrassing kind. 

But all these obligations assumed a strictly legal 
form ; and the common training in the Civil and Canon 
Law of those who usually conducted those negotiations 
conduced to the same result. The consequence was 
that, in spite of all these multiplied and formal ties, 
the notion of legal, and thereby of political, inde- 
pendence was retained in quite as unmutilated a shape 
as is the notion of his personal freedom by a modern 
citizen, in spite of all the multifarious contracts by 
which he has bound himself, or the obligation of 
which has accrued to him by succession. 

The difference lately brought about is that, owing 
to the closer approximation in thought, speech, habitji- 
of life, and, above all, in forms of government, of the 
populations of different States, coupled with the in- 
creased influence of these populations on their several 



MUTUAL AriTvOACir OF STATES. 349 

Governments, the relations of States to eacli other are 
found to be much more numerous and imj)ortant than 
was at any previous time imagined. It is disclosed that 
not only are the large sections of humanity, personated 
by the different States, morally bound to concern them- 
selves actively in each other's welfare and progress, but 
that, economically, the advance of each is the advance 
of all, and, politically, disorder or retrogression exist- 
ing anywhere tends to diffuse itself everywhere. It is 
being found less and less possible for a State, however 
signal its geographical advantages in separation from 
its neighbours, to venture to ask whether it is its 
brother's keeper ? 

Not only generally accepted (though^ as yet im- 
perfectly applied) doctrines of trade and commerce, 
but incessant improvements in locomotion, in means 
of communication, in the use of the journalistic 
press, and in the facilities of travel, are bringing the 
populations of States, traditionally enemies, and des- 
tined always to be rivals, closer and closer to each 
other. This closer approach is signalised in the pro- 
gressive assimilation of political institutions, and still 
more emphatically in the acceptance of a common 
standard of moral and political obligation. Inter-- 
national Law is no longer cited as the last test of what 
a righteous State ought to do, but only as the standard 
to fix what even an unrighteously disposed State must 
at least do. 

A new sense of moral and social relationship between 

the populations of different States is not restricted in 

its effects to the prevention of gross political wi'ongs 

which the larger meshes of International Law might in 

other days have allowed to pass uncensured. The 
IG 



350 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

same sense is begmnino- to act positively in bringing 
States together for the achievement of higher and ever 
higher ends. The recollections of such hypocritical 
and tyrannical associations as the Holy Alliance are 
still sufficiently lively to produce a genuine and 
wholesome caution in the minds of statesmen invited 
to take part in extended coalitions ; and even in the 
numerous political Congresses for which this century 
will be memorable the States represented have usually 
shrunk at the last from bending themselves to any 
corporate action. 

Nevertheless, there are many symptoms which show 
that politically, as well as socially, many States are 
being drawn together by the strong attractions of 
common political sentiments, common aspirations, and 
common interests of a permanent kind. These com- 
mon grounds of cohesion are likely to grow out 
of all proportion to the grounds of repulsion, though 
the latter will always be liable to reappear and, for a 
time, to disappoint the hopes of mankind. The main 
obstacle, however, to increased union and co-operation 
will not be found in the more advanced States, but in 
the unequal rate of growth of some States and in the 
inevitable mixture of the sound and unsound States in 
one common society. 

The main hindrances to a final European settle- 
ment are disclosed not so much in the antipathies of 
France and Germany, — which might one day be as 
satisfactorily adjusted by pacific settlement as by a 
fresh treaty of peace following on a war, — as in the 
composite and feebly organised constitution of Austro- 
Hungary, in the backwardness of Eussia, and the 
intrusion of Turkish principles of government and 



CO-OPERATION OF STATi:S. 351 

Miissulman institutions into an advanced European 
society. Sucli infirm or putrefying elements form 
centres round which eyevy disorderly and selfish in- 
stinct in well-ordered States gathers ; and the interests 
concerned are great enough to afford a constant temjyia' 
tion to the aggressive spirit which is latent somewhere 
in all States and cannot always resist the neighbour- 
hood of an easy and too seductive prey. 

Thus the notion of the independence of a State no 
longer means exemption from moral responsibility to 
other States, any more than it has meant, since the 
days of Grotius, the exemption from legal responsibility. 
The conception of moral relationships of a distinct and 
positive kind, reaching far beyond the rights and duties 
alone recognised by International Law, has been much 
fortified of late years, — and will, probably, be still more 
so in the future, — by the inducements to commercial 
and industrial co-operation which increasingly prevail. 

No doubt the universal acceptance of Free Trade 
doctrines will do away with commercial treaties and 
customs-unions, together with all like instruments for 
drawing together particular groups of States. But the 
existence of such instruments is a modern phenomenon, 
and when they are finally superseded by perfect freedom 
of commerce, the gain to political association, generally 
and on the whole, will be far greater than the loss, as 
estimated by the disuse of special and artificial ties. 

To the class of subjects in respect of which industrial 
and commercial co-operation between State and State 
is becoming conspicuous, belong international canals, 
tunnels, railways, navigable rivers, and postal and 
telegraph communication. Many of these enterprises 
involve the construction of great works and the sub- 



352 THE SCLKNCE OF POLITICS. 

scription of a considerable amount of capital, and, 
sometimes, years of labour before they are completed. 
All this demands a high amount of economic organisa- 
tion, mutual trust and financial credit, and the con- 
tribution of capital, labour, and skill, from all the States 
concerned. The multiplication of such works and 
projects is the best testimony that a reign of perpetual 
peace, if not yet quite arrived, is, nevertheless, a more 
familiar idea and hope than the expectation of incessant 
war. 

There still are, indeed, military authorities who 
regard some of these improved means of international 
communication as fraught with peril to their own 
States, and tliey have influence on the minds of the 
people and of statesmen. But the disposition to 
annihilate the repellant effects of all artificial and 
material boundaries between State and State is far too 
strong to be allayed by terrors which are every day 
more obviously fanciful. The boundaries themselves 
still remain as testimonies to State-independence and 
as supports of the individuality of national character. 

There is, in all this, a transmutation of the older 
notion of political independence. The newer aspect 
of political independence, which may be assumed to 
be the permanent one, rests upon real and not upon 
fictitious, accidental, and temporary, foundations. It 
has deep roots in distinct geographical lines of demar- 
cation, in language, in race, in community of religion, 
and of political antecedents. But it is not restricted by 
any limits, arbitrarily imposed by such elements, nor 
by any assemblages of them taken together. Nor is it 
possible to assign finality to any existing or future dis- 



DOCTRINE OF INTERVENTION. 353 

tributioii of the population of the world into national 
groups. Suffice it that clear indications have al- 
ready been presented that the independence of States 
will not hereafter rest on mere legal circumscriptions 
contained in treaties^ nor on the frail support of 
dynastical relationships. It will rest on Nationality, as 
described, not by sharp legal definitions, but by the 
multifarious elements which combine to create and to 
nourish a living political community. 

The practical form in which the notion of political 
Independence presents itself as requiring limitation 
or expansion is in connexion with Intervention on the 
part of one State in the affairs of another. The legal 
doctrine of intervention has been laid down again and 
again of late years with a considerable amount of pre- 
cision ; and it will be found, in the text- books of inter- 
national law, that a number of distinct grounds are 
detailed on which intervention is held to be legally 
allowable. Among these grounds the restoration of 
order after protracted anarchy, and the abolition 
of institutions held to be inhuman, occupy a place of 
marked prominence. But, as a matter of fact, the 
legal prescriptions which it is affected fco lay down with 
such minuteness are all founded on historical acts of 
intervention in recent times, especially in the case of 
slavery, the slave-trade, and Ottoman misgovemment, 
which, at the time, proceeded wholly from political, and 
not at all from legal, considerations. Indeed the at- 
tempt to apply, in a legal way, the test of humanity 
as a legitimate ground for intervention almost confesses 
its own inadequacy. The term must have different 
meanings for each progressive step in civilisation, and 



354 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the use of it serves rather as an explanation of a per- 
manent principle than as a precise limit of future 
action. 

In fact^ the grounds of intervention in the future 
will, as in the past, be the consequence and expression 
of the existing notions of political independence and 
of the mutual relationships of States. Intervention 
is but the converse of independence ; and, as it has 
been shown that, in one sense, the dependence of 
State on State is largely increasing and promises to 
become indefinitely close as time advances, it becomes 
proportionately difiicult to assign limits to the right of 
intervention. It may be expected, however, that such 
limits will practically be found in the general disuse of 
war, and in the disappearance of the secret and astute 
diplomacy which has characterised international rela- 
tionship in the times now passing away. 

The publicity of diplomacy in consequence of the 
popularisation of Government no doubt has a bad as 
well as a good side. "When there is a real ground of 
misunderstanding or disagreement between States, or 
when some complicated arrangements involving com- 
promises and fine adjustments of interests are proceed- 
ing, or when a sudden emergency presents itself, the 
disadvantage of popular institutions is at its highest. 
Nevertheless an adequate compensation is obtained in 
a broad popular interest in foreign policy ; in the 
public political training which conversance with ex- 
ternal relationships on the largest scale is sure to 
impart ; and in the immediate responsibility of the 
Executive to a popular Assembly unsparing of criticism 
but not incapable in real emergencies, as history has 
shown (in Greece, in Rome, and in England times with- 



THE TEEATY-MAKING POWEK. 355 

out number) 5 of discretion, reserve, and self-restraint of 
the loftiest order. 

The Constitution of the United States has made a 
happy provision for strengthening the executive autho- 
rity in the conduct of foreign relations, in the appoint- 
ment of ambassadors and in the conclusion of treaties, 
by requiring the President to obtain for some of these 
matters the consent of a majority — or, in certain cases, 
of two-thirds — of the Senate. 

In England an attempt has been repeatedly made 
to prevent any Government of the day concluding 
a treaty without the knowledge and the assent, express 
or implied, of Parliament. Such limitations, however, 
on the power of the executive authority would tend 
unduly to hamper its action and so to prejudice the 
free movements of the State without obtaining advan- 
tages not to be otherwise procured. The true remedy 
for executive incompetency and wrong-doing in a con- 
stitutional government is not to be sought in weakening 
public action at home and abroad, but in increasing, if 
necessary, the responsibility of the Executive, or even 
by specially supplementing it for certain classes of 
work. The loss encountered through occasional abuse, 
which might have been checked by Parliament, if in- 
formed in time, is a small counterpoise to the weight 
of an Executive powerful in the possession of popular 
confidence. It would be a discredit to popular insti- 
tutions if the energy of the State in which they were 
found could not compete with rival States governed in 
a more despotic way. 

Having considered what are the essential differences 
which civilisation is bringing to light between popu- 



356 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

larly governed States in their mutual relations with 
States resting on dynastic or aristocratic interests, the 
next question which presents itself is whether any cor- 
responding change is being disclosed in the objects of 
policy. The objects of the older time, only now slowly 
passing away, may be described as eminently self- 
regarding, jealous, suspicious, negative, and military, 
whether from an offensive or from a defensive point of 
view. The dominant purpose manifested by European 
diplomacy was to promote such alliances, to bring about 
such combinations, and to stimulate such sentiments of 
national cupidity or fear as might enable a State to 
dispense with the necessity of war, or to have a good 
chance of success if compelled to fight. 

Of course such astute and connected aims as these, 
which only took form in the ablest statesmen of France, 
Italy, Austria, Spain, and England, were crossed over 
and over again by transient religious antipathies, ex- 
tending, as in the case of the Thirty Years' War, over 
many countries ; or by casual personal aspirations, as 
those of Edward III., Charles Y., and Philip 11. ; or by 
a momentous sense of common danger, as in com- 
binations against the Turks. 

But, on the w^hole, the policy of the States of Europe 
between the times of Charlemagne and Napoleon was 
of a defensive and jealous kind. 

If it be alleged that during this period the two 
successive dominions of Spain and of France came into 
existence as the products of successful diplomacy and 
offensive w^ars, and the kingdom of Prussia shawed 
promise of expanding from a small stone into a great 
mountain destined to fill the whole world of diplomatic 
interest, these instances, when properly examined, only 



DEFENSIVE POLICY OF STATES. 357 

go to establish the proposition laid down. In the 15th 
and 16th centuries, when the characteristic policj' of 
this age of the world was at its climax, no State could 
subsist unless hedged round by treaties, or protected by 
special alliances, or overshadowed by some more power- 
ful State or union of States. In the weakness of law 
and the absence of morals, so far as political relation- 
ships went, the first necessity for a large State was 
to secure allies, and for a small State to secure the 
guardianship of a larger one. For this end all sorts of 
devices, of a legal kind mostly, were resorted to ; of 
which royal marriages, the recognition and enforce- 
ment of feudal bonds (gradually becoming obsolete), 
royal wills, sales, and exchanges, are the most familiar. 

It is a misreading of history and biography to 
attribute to mere personal ambition and covetousness 
the febrile eagerness of European monarchs and states- 
men to direct the succession and to increase the terri- 
tory of their States. No doubt such sentiments affected 
at times even the best and the most patriotic diploma- 
tists and courtiers. But the expediency of multiplying 
trustworthy allies, and of attaching the populations of 
other States, was far too obvious for it to be necessary 
to have recourse to low passions and vulgar greed 
in order to explain policy often consistently pursued 
through a whole century or longer. 

In the course of this constant accretion of State to 
State through the medium of alliances, dynastic rela- 
tionships, and feudal ties, it was inevitable that the 
stronger elements should prevail over the weaker; that, 
in fact, the loosely coherent republics of Italy, and the 
feebly compacted States of the Holy Eoman Empire, 
should succumb first to Austria, then to Spain, then to 



358 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Prussia, then to Prance, and then to England. Then 
a fresh distribution of power was effected by the settle- 
raent of the Congress of Vienna. 

In the international political world it has always 
been the case that original, or assumed, necessities 
of self-defence, have generated wide-spreading empires. 
Nations which might be immortal cannot stand still 
in their growth without nurturing the seeds of death ; 
though, as in the case of some Oriental States, these 
seeds may be of slow growth. So long as no real 
relationships of common interest and reciprocal moral 
obligation are yet discovered, nations endeavour to 
protect their frail existence by artificial ties and* bonds 
one with another. But the effect of these ties and 
bonds is to produce new aggregates of accumulated 
force before which the smaller and weaker elements 
lose their independence. This process has been re- 
peated again and again in the modern world as it was 
in the ancient, and it is the most hopeful symptom 
of the new era which this century has ushered in that 
natural ties are being everywhere substituted for those 
which are artificial, and that the strength of those 
natural ties is being made to rest on doctrines which 
promise them permanence. 

These ties have already been described as those of 
nationality, — defining this term with reference to all 
the multiform and somewhat indefinite ingredients 
which it connotes. The novel doctrines which tend to 
impart to it jDermanent validity are the economic one, 
that the wealth of one nation is promoted not by the 
poverty but by the wealth and prosperity of its neigh- 
bours, or rather of all other nations ; the utilitarian 
one, that, on the whole, a nation serves its own interest 



CHANGE IN THE OBJECIS OF POLICY. 359 

best by contributing to the utmost to promote the 
conjoint interest of all nations, including itself; and 
the moral one, that there is an abstract right and wrong 
in Politics (a subject hereafter to be separately treated), 
and that it is the moral duty of each State to do good 
rather than evil to other States, and to take pleasure — 
even, at certain moments, at its own expense — in the 
sense of a common progress and happiness for all, of 
which the particular gain of individual States is a re- 
assuring token. 

The prevalence of such an assemblage of doctrines 
as this is markedly opposed to all those sentiments which 
have in past times kept up incessant jealousies, irrita- 
tions, and suspicions, between States, with the effect of 
producing unintermittent war, and of an alternate 
merging of small States into unwieldy Empires, and 
violent dissolution of the Empires so artificially com- 
posed. 

This change of international sentiment has its 
roots not merely in the convictions of a narrow class of 
diplomatic statesmen. It lies deep in the minds and 
hearts of large classes of persons in each State capable 
of making their influence felt and of sustaining each 
other by all the agencies of publicity, of free correspond- 
ence, and of organised association for purposes not 
wholly selfish. The practical consequences of the 
change mirror themselves in a silent modification of 
the objects of political action. Not, indeed, that the 
old objects are not still present, especially in the less 
advanced States, and, unfortunately, too often in the 
intercourse between the more advanced States and the 
less advanced ones. But there are many unmistakable 
signs that international political action is concerned 



360 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

not merely with remote contingencies of a self-pro- 
tecting kind, but with arrangements or contracts 
having in view contributory aid to common and worthy 
purposes. 

The abolition or simplification of border customs- 
duties, the abolition of passports, and the prevalence of 
more and more wide-reaching commercial treaties ; the 
combinations bet^Yeen States for the purposes of cur- 
rency, extradition, postal and locomotive uniformity, 
and the convenient use of navigable rivers and harbours ; 
the common abolition of inhuman institutions, such 
as slavery and the slave-trade; the construction of 
engineering works in common, and common arrange- 
ments for facilitating exploration and scientific enter- 
prises ; the prevention of the spread of disease ; and, 
not least of all, concert for the purpose of reducing 
the atrocities of war, and even for reducing its frequency 
or the apparent necessity for it in any case ; these are 
a series of objects which are now being carried out on 
every side by the political association of State with 
State, and yet which have before the present century 
few precedents in the history of the international rela- 
tions of the most civilised States. 

It is impossible not to discern in all these things 
indications that, in spite of the enormous armies and 
navies which are such a startling feature of the times, 
many of the causes of war are being progressively^ if 
slowly, moved out of the way, so far as the more 
civilised States of the world are concerned. The size 
of these armies and navies, and the corresponding 
military and naval organisation which proceeds un- 
restingly even in times of profound peace, are not a 
fair measure of the warlike disposition of the age. 



DISINCLINATION TO WAR. 361 

It is not contended here that the warlike instincts 
of mankind, or even the real necessities of resorting to 
force, are yet obsolete ; and it is the part rather of the 
pious prophet than of the scientific politician to fix a 
point on the visible horizon at which they will become 
so. It is siiflB.cient that these instincts and necessities 
are, for the first time, finding vast classes of competing 
and ever strengthening claims for supremacy in the life 
and mutual action of States, and that the region of the 
grounds for war is becoming incessantly narrowed. So 
far as these grounds still remain, it might have been 
expected that war would borrow from peace all its 
hitherto unexampled capacity for economic concentra- 
tion of capital and scientific organisation. In this 
way the most alarming symptoms of a new era of war 
are, in truth, but testimonies to the arts of peace. 

It may be expected, indeed, that war will destroy 
itself by consuming all the resources on which the 
elaboration it calls for in time of peace can alone be fed. 
It is being felt, as never before, that war is a question 
of competing capital, and of competing scientific and 
engineering device, which can be paid for and has a 
fixed price in the market. The result will be, not only 
to rob war of its gloss, and to reduce it to a huckstering 
pursuit, or at the best to a ruinous police agency, but 
to introduce into diplomacy that habit of pecuniary 
calculation which is favourable to delay, negotiation, 
and compromise. Never, as now, have wars been 
anxiously shrunk from by States armed at all points, 
and averted at the last moments by successfully con- 
ducted overtures of peace. 

The hope has of late years been gaining ground in 



362 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

many quarters that a day is not far distant when political 
questions will find their solution in a higher form of 
association among civilised States amenable to the 
same legal discipline and to that uniform standard of 
moral obligation which now binds together the popu- 
lation of each single State. This speculation, which is 
captivating to the generous imagination and has found 
repeated expression in the writings of the most ad- 
vanced thinkers of different countries, demands, at the 
least, that its basis should be carefully considered, and 
such truth as it has be brought out into clear relief. 

It is no doubt true that the national differences 
between the existing States of the civilised western 
world have been largely brought about by historical 
accidents, and that the effects of these accidents are 
already being constantly modified, and might some day 
be almost obliterated. The vast differences of language 
and of religion might even become less significant than 
they are now, not through assimilation, but through 
the diffusion of a common education and a common 
literature, and by the general recognition of political and 
social principles in the application of which religious 
peculiarities would count for far less than they do now. 

It has also been seen that a general reassortment of 
States has been rapidly proceeding during the present 
century, the effect of which will be to annihilate 
merely artificial divisions derived from the chance 
caprice of rulers, the events of war, the calculations of 
diplomatists, and the ' long result of time.' For these 
divisions are being substituted others based on com- 
munity of national sentiment and on geographical 
convenience. 

In the conception, however, of such a continuance 



NATIONAL DISTINCTIONS ARE ESSENTIAL. 363 

of the assimilative process as might ultimately abolish 
all national distinctions, except as sentimental recol- 
lections and rallying points, the true value of the dis- 
tinctions themselves is ignored or underrated. Not 
only history (the teachings of which might be objected 
to as hitherto too partial to be available for the pur- 
poses of prevision), but the profoun-dest views of the 
constitution of man and of human nature, enforce the 
notion that national distinctions are indispensable to 
universal political progress. Beyond a certain limit, 
which is partly fixed by extent of territory, partly by 
l^opulation, and partly by accumulated elements not 
assignable in advance, government only gains in uni- 
formity what it loses in worth and strength. 

The example, indeed, of the enormous regions 
governed, not altogether unsuccessfully, by the United 
States Con ogress at Washinc^ton, and of the British 
Indian and British Colonial Empire, governed by a 
Parliament sitting in London, certainly show that any 
attempt to fix limits to the extent of a single dominion 
would be, at present, premature. 

It has already been seen that it is the characteristic 
problem of Local Government, of the Government of 
Colonies, and of Federal Government, to render central 
control compatible with a large amount of local inde- 
pendence. But it is one thing to cling to a formal 
unity long maintained and having its roots deep in 
historical causes. It is quite another thing for States 
alreadj'' enjoying an independence which the history of 
centuries has guaranteed to them amidst all fluctua- 
tions to sacrifice the characteristic advantages of that 
independence, in pursuit of the questionable good of a 
dominant unity. 



364 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

As the area of nationality becomes extended, 
through causes of the nature of forced amalgamation 
rather than of ethical adhesiveness, the sentiment of 
patriotic identity handed down from generation to 
generation becomes weakened through diffusion and 
through having less and less relation to the real facts. 

Even in modern Greece, with all the advantages of 
common records of resistance to the Turk, the common 
use of an ancient language consecrated by the best 
literature of the world, and the occupation of a soil 
the traditions of which the world will not willingly let 
die, — the struggle to maintain the sense of national 
continuity (with something of what it means in this 
special case) has proved to be of the hardest, especially 
as new territory is annexed. There is, probably, no 
sentiment more powerful for good of all sorts than the 
national sentiment, and the loss or general weakening 
of it would be irrepai'able. 

Of course it must be expected that all the move- 
ments of the new age will tend to reduce this sentiment 
in many of its aspects and modes of expression. Nations 
will no longer value themselves on their exclusive 
military prowess, or on their monopoly of virtue, of 
intelligence, or of good manners. But each nation, so 
long as its limits admit of the national sentiment being 
duly fostered, will be conscious of its own history and 
of the moral and intellectual contributions which its 
antecedents and qualifications specially call upon it to 
make for the general good. It will know in what 
respects, through hereditary defects in the character of 
the population, or through physical disadvantages, 
or through historical misfortunes, it is at a disadvan- 
tage as compared to others. But it will also calmly 



ASSOCIATION OF STATES. 365 

and gravely, like Pericles in liis Funeral Oration, 
ascertain and know in what its characteristic strength 
and excellence lie. It will use this strength and excel- 
lence, but not abuse them. It will remember that no 
nation is bound to be the slave, but that all are bound 
to be the free servants, of humanity. And humanity 
will gain infinitely more by this free and independent 
contribution from a multitude of centres, each sus- 
taining its own national altar and worshipping its own 
^ods and heroes, than by the best organised company 
of nationalities who have purchased the show of uni- 
formity and political tolerance at the price of universal 
infidelity. 

This prospect, however, of associated national life 
is limited at best to Europe and America and the 
European Colonies. There are still the large outlying 
nations of the East, which cannot be left out of the 
political survey; and there are the rude populations of 
Africa and of the Oceanic islands, and the aboriginal 
tribes still inhabiting territory otherwise appropriated, 
with whom civilised nations are brought into necessary 
contact. 

The narrative of the political relations of nations 
calling themselves civilised with nations they have 
deemed uncivilised is a discreditable part of human 
history. It would seem as if the irresponsible savagery 
of primitive barbarism, after being expelled by the ad- 
vent of law and government from the relationships of 
man with man, had taken refuge in the relationships of 
nation with nation. 

The tales of the treatment of the native inhabitants 
of the American Continent by the Spaniards and 
Portuguese may perhaps be treated as exceptional 



366 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

barbarities due to a transient conspiracy of money- 
greed and intolerant superstition. But even in very 
recent times the persistently overbearing treatment of 
China by England, the dealings of France with the 
civilised Arab races of North Africa, and the cruel 
tyranny exercised over all the inhabited communities, 
civilised or uncivilised, capable of supplying what are 
known as coolie labourers specially J&tted to labour in 
tropical countries, by some of the British Colonies, by 
France, and by Portugal, combine to show that mere 
progress in civilisation is no guarantee against the 
abuse of its responsibilities. 

Many of the questions raised by international rela- 
tions between countries at different stages of civilisa- 
tion are ethical rather than political in the narrower 
sense, though the results of particular modes of solving 
them are political in all senses of the term. The sort 
of questions w^hich are presented relate to the recog- 
nition of institutions in one State which are, not only 
alien but repugnant, to the sentiment of the inhabi- 
tants of another with which it is brought into contact. 
Such institutions are polygamy, slavery, torture, ido- 
latry, and commercial exclusiveness. 

In Europe, indeed, the several States grew up at 
very different rates of progress, and there were parts of 
North Germany and of Western Britain which retained 
pagan and inhuman customs long after Roman law and 
Christianity had saturated the States of Central and 
Southern Europe. But the centralising influences of 
Feudalism and of the Eoman Church triumphed over 
the dislocating effects of diverse institutions, and the 
international law of the West became the expression 
of both the fact of, and the aspiration after, moral unity. 



CAUSES OF COMMERCIAL WARS. 3o7 

There lias been no parallel set of influences at work 
to amalgamate Western and Eastern civilisation ; and it 
has unfortunately happened, from the nature of the 
case, that contact between the two has been mainly 
conducted under the rough and ready conditions found 
in cosmopolitan sea-ports. Commercial relationships 
have often sprung up long before the character, laws, and 
practices of one party to national obligations are known 
to the other. 

For a time, it may be, and so long as negotiations 
are strictly confined to the merchant class, all works 
well. But so soon as the area of transactions becomes 
extended, and a number of fresh persons, not originally 
contemplated, become involved, either through suc- 
cession or through transfer of engagements, serious 
disputes are sure to arise. For want of a tribunal and 
of a definite system of laws recognised by all, legal 
points instantly become matters of personal recrimi- 
nation. The reign of misapprehension, of confusion, 
and of ignorance on all sides, extends itself more and 
more widely ; till the executive authorities on the 
spot are forced to interfere in order to protect life and 
property ; and war, usually made by the stronger against 
the weaker, is precipitated in a day. The result of the 
war is, of course, endless and ignominious concessions 
made by the weak to the strong. 

It may be, of course, that instead of the hypothesis 
of commercial relationships being the origin of the 
contact, it begins in proselytising effort, in ill-advised 
enterprises of travellers, in disputes as to the rights of 
fugitive slaves, or as to the requirements of courteous 
ceremonial in conducting international correspondence. 
Whatever be the immediate occasion of the controversy. 



368 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

it is inevitable that some sucL. controversy must sooner 
or later arise between States the institutions of which 
widely differ, and yet the inhabitants of each of which 
happen to come into frequent contact. 

The remedy will probably be found in the firm and 
practical retention of two political truths ; one, that a 
State cannot be forcibly driven ahead in such a way as 
to enable it to evade the necessity of passing through 
all the intermediate stages of progress from the first to 
the last ; the other, that a more advanced State can, in 
a variety of ways, help a less advanced one to pass 
through these stages with a rapidity and ease it could 
not attain in default of such aid. 

Now it vrill be generally admitted that the assimila- 
tion, — though not the identification, — of moral habits 
and institutions, and of political and legal ideas, between 
all the States of the World is, prima facie, desirable as 
favourable to union and to communion. It will be 
quite as generally admitted by the more advanced 
States that the continued retention by less advanced 
ones of unsocial and inhuman institutions is undesirable 
from a purely self interested point of view. On both 
these grounds it may be maintained that the most 
enlightened policy in the future will compel the more 
advanced States to do their utmost to promote and not 
to retard the development of the less advanced ones. 

The gains of a few Portuguese merchants three cen- 
turies ago were a poor compensation for excluding China 
from all contact with the rest of the world from that 
time till a quarter of a century ago. Even the gains of 
English merchants, acquired in China first by smuggling 
connived at by the British Government, then secured 
by wars engaged in for their benefit, and by a Treaty 



HELATIONS WITH LESS CIVILISED STATES. 369 

imposed on China by force of arms, iiave poorly compen- 
sated for the political discredit attached to the British 
character, for the stinted commercial transactions 
between China and England, and for the jealousy, 
suspicion, and distaste, directed against Englishmen, 
which rob commerce with China of all its natural and 
healthy stimulus. 

If, then, it be a well-recorrnised political object to 
hasten the time for the disaj)pearance of barbarous 
institutions, the best mode of bringing this about is to 
facilitate to the utmost intercourse between the inha- 
bitants of the less and of the more advanced States. 
This can only be done, however, by abstaining from 
giving rude shocks to the sensibilities of those who 
continue attached to their traditional institutions, 
however bad and even immoral these may be from a 
higher standpoint ; by the practice of a courteous and 
respectful demeanour in travellers, missionaries, and 
merchants towards all national observances and cere- 
monies ; by recognising, if not by actively contributing 
to maintain, practices which may be objectionable in 
themselves, but which it would be premature at present, 
even for the Government of the State in which they 
are found, to endeavour to extirpate ; and lastly, by 
going the utmost lengths in recognising the national 
independence even of the weakest State, so as to 
encourage confidence and to supersede the necessity of 
precautions which act as trammels on perfect freedom 
of association. Some such policy as this was generally 
pursued and recommended by the East India Company 
in their relations with native States, as they came into 
contact with them one by one ; and if some of the 



370 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

institutions of British India and of tlie Native Indian 
States have shown an extraordinary tenacity, it is 
probably beca^use the European element has been 
numerically small and confined to the official and com- 
mercial classes. There is also reason to fear that the 
British Government in India has erred on the side 
of positively encouraging, and thereby prolonging the 
vitality of, institutions which ought to have been, ere 
this, dying a natural death. 



371 



CHAPTER X. 

THE PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT. 

A CONSIDERATION of what a Government ouglit to do 
and what it ought to abstain from doing is a topic which 
has attracted the attention of modern writers more than 
any other in the region of serious political speculation. 
In ancient times, — that is, in the best days of Greece 
and of Eome, or even in the days of the best political 
Greek and Roman writers, such as Aristotle and Cicero, 
— no doubt seems to have perplexed the thoughts of 
men as to the place Government ought to take in human 
affairs. As soon as political speculation again awoke, 
at the time of the growth of the Italian Hepublics and 
the collapse of the feudal system, though the source of 
all government, the duties of rulers, and the rights of 
the people shared with the topic of the best form of 
government the attention of such writers as Machia- 
velli, Bacon, Montesquieu, Harrington, Hobbes, and 
Locke, — yet it seems to have been assumed in theory, 
as it was in practice, that, provided the government 
was good and had an accredited authority, there was 
no limit to its free right of action. 

Now that the other questions as to the source and 
even as to the form of government are apj)roaching a 
solution, it may be asked why there still remains 
wholly unanswered the question as to the restrictions 



372 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

by which governmental action ought to be, — and there- 
fore will be, — hemmed in. 

Wilhelm von Humboldt's concise and remarkable 
work, in which he advocates the extremest govern- 
mental apathj^ and inaction, is perhaps the most im- 
portant contribution to the statement and discussion of 
the question, though the consideration of the same 
subject by Mr. John Stuart Mill in some of the later 
pages of his ' Political Economy,' and by Mr. Herbert 
Spencer in his ' Social Statics ' and his ' Essay on Over- 
Government,' should be studied as essential portions of 
the Literature of this topic. 

Nevertheless these treatises and casual discussions 
have not exhausted the subject. Indeed they have done 
little more than indicate its inherent difficulties. Mr. 
Mill chiefly confines himself to pointing out the in- 
conveniences which follow from too great an extension 
of the area of governmental interference in some 
directions, and from too restricted an extension of it 
in others. But he scarcely lingers to propound all the 
principles of judgment which must guide the statesman 
as to when to act and when to refrain from acting. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer again, with his masterly com- 
mand of illustration, mainly confines himself to dwelling 
on all the disadvantages and disabling weakness which 
follow from reliance on government aid without con- 
sidering historically how this reliance sprang up, and 
liow, consequently, it can, as things are, be dispensed 
with. 

Among the causes which have led to the question of 
the proper limits of Governmental action being opened 
out in England, — and thereby in all the countries which 
are sharing, either through inheritance or imitation, 



THE PKOVINCE OF GOVERNMENT. 373 

its political institutions, — are to be conntecl, first, tlio 
independent individuality of which the development of 
the English constitution is at once the cause, the effect, 
and the best expression ; and, secondly, the economic 
doctrines which have attained ever increasing predomi- 
nance since the days of Adam Smith. 

No doubt the principles of religious independence 
which attained their climax in the days of the Com- 
monwealth, which coloured the circumstances of the 
Eevolution of 1G88, and which were recalled to a 
second life by Wesley and Whitefield, made a favourable 
atmosphere for the criticism of all secular government, 
as an alien and purely human institution which must 
be submitted to just the same tests of suitability and 
usefulness as any other instrument contrived for definite 
ends. 

In a similar way, in America, the shock of political 
thought brought about in the interior of each of the 
thirteen colonies, by the delegation of important pre- 
rogatives to a new-fashioned central government, ren- 
dered the criticism of that Government, of its functions, 
and of its rights and duties, as natural as, in other times 
and circumstances, was the unquestioned submission 
to the claims of any Government believed to be duly 
authorised. 

The origin of a disposition to reject the pre- 
tensions of Government to occupy any field of action it 
chooses, without accountability to any other standard 
than the apparent demands of the moment, must be 
sought chiefly in the first of these causes. Modern 
political society in the West, unlike that of Greece and 
Eome and that of the oriental world, has been built up 
out of the magnificent ruins of feudalism. This system 
17 



374 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

has passed througli inucli tlie same stages in each of 
the leadmg countries of Western Europe, but at very 
different rates. 

It took longer in France than in England for 
the feudal monarch to obtain undisputed supremacy 
over the Dukes, Counts, and Barons. But when that 
supremacy was attained the French King was nearly a 
despot who had annihilated his opponents, while the 
English King was a constitutionul ruler who competed 
with his nobles for the loyal support of an enfranchised 
people. Thus in England, at an early date, the notion 
of individual rights against both the Crown and the 
Aristocracy prevailed ; and the early and rapid develop- 
ment of the House of Commons gave practical effect to 
a conception which became every year more distinct 
and more popular. 

In the times of the Edwards and the early Tudors 
the House of Commons, except on questions of granting 
supplies, was little more than an organ for enforcing 
on the people the capricious policy of a monarch or 
of his favourite adviser. By the time of the Stuarts 
the same House had become an organ for enforcing 
the will of the people on the King, — and the only 
progress made since has been that of annihilating 
more and more decisively all impediments between the 
expression of the people's will and the act of carrying it 
into effect. Thus, while a state of mind fa.vourable to 
an outside criticism of the duties and claims of govern- 
ment has been in course of incessant cultivation, the 
people themselves have had cast upon them the charge 
of government to an extent which may well make them 
pause to ask whether power may not be abused in their 
hands as w^ell as in the hands of an aristocracy or a 



THE PROVINCE OF GOVEKNMENT. 375 

monarch? Is there any limit beyond which, even in 
the name of an authorised government itself, they 
ought not to advance ? 

This aspect of Government has been brought into 
clearer relief daring the present century from the 
development of the science of Political Economy in 
the hands of Adam Smith and his successors in this 
country up to Mr. John Stuart Mill. This science had, 
indeed, been cultivated with success both in England 
and in France before the publication of the ^Wealth 
of Nations'; and the bearing of some of its leading 
doctrines on practical politics had been appreciated, 
or, at least, divined. But, between the publication of 
Adam Smith's ' Wealth of Nations ' and that of Mr. 
Mill's treatise on the same subject^ events of an un- 
precedented character and on an enormous scale had 
happened, enforcing public attention to the mutual 
relations of economical and political science. 

The question of the right of taxing colonies had 
been mooted in England and in America in a form in 
which it required all the genius of Adam Smith and 
of Edmund Burke to separate the claims of economic 
advantage, of moral right, and of political expediencj^ 
The collapse of the social, industrial, and financial 
system of France, — represented by the state of things to 
be known for all time as the first French Revolution, — 
threw into the crucible every familiar theory of the 
basis of government, and illustrated with only too 
brilliant a glare the dependence of all governments on 
economic conditions which they may control and con- 
form to, but which they cannot, with impunity, ignore 
or defy. 

In England, again, the recovery of the national 



376 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

energy expended in the war witli France was signally 
retarded by the agricultural distress following on a 
return to the lower prices belonging to a time of peace, 
by the desperate efforts to find redress in multiplied 
Protective duties, and by the aggravation of all the 
other perplexities brought about by the scandalous 
operation of a Poor Law system which was the in- 
heritance of times of economic childhood, and which 
was successful only in the rapid manufacture of paupers. 

It was in order to solve such urgent practical 
problems as these that such writers as Adam Smith, 
Eicardo and the two Mills addressed themselves to ques- 
tion afresh, from a purely logical standpoint, whether 
there were any laws governing the production and dis- 
tribution of national wealth which were, in a true sense, 
laws of Nature, and which, as such, could not, without 
disaster, be trifled with by Governments. 

The true purpose which scientific writers on what is 
now recognised under the title of Political Economy 
proposed to themselves has veiy generally been mis- 
conceived, and their labours have, consequently, been 
in many quarters regarded with a prejudice and distrust 
quite undeserved — at least so far as the most eminent 
of these writers is concerned. It has been supposed 
that they set before themselves the object not of showing 
on what conditions national wealth depends, but of 
enforcing on governments and on individual persons 
the obligation of creating wealth in preference (if it 
must be so) to the discharge of other and competing 
obligations. 

Thus Mr. Malthus announced an economic law that, 
in certain countries and in certain conditions of society, 
population tends to increase more rapidly than the 



INFLUENCES OF TOLITICAL ECONOMY. 377 

means of subsistence, and but for certain checks (which 
he enumerated) would, within a limited time, gain upon 
those means in such a measure as to involve widespread 
penury and misery. The consequence has been that 
the name of Malthus has been erroneously identified 
with a doctrine that it is the duty of all men every- 
w^here, both individually and by corporate action, to 
devise all sorts of artificial means to restrict popu- 
lation. 

In the same way the political economists who have 
pointed out how indiscriminate poor relief, whether 
accorded by the State or by private persons, promotes 
pauperism and saps the sense of independence and 
self-reliance, have been habitually charged w^itli in- 
difference to the culture of the charitable virtues, and 
with hardness or cruelty to the poor. Even those 
writers who have attempted to help working men to 
understand the necessary effects of Trade Combinations 
and strikes on wages and prices, with a view to 
ascertaining the principles on which these combina- 
tions and strikes can, and cannot, be resorted to in the 
true interest of the labourer, have been 'too frequently 
misrepresented and supposed to be the enemies, and 
not the friends, of working men. 

No doubt the attitude occasionally adopted by some 
leading writers, and the want of strict adherence to 
the true limits of their subject-matter, have given some 
colour to these reproaches. But the subject of economics, 
— dealing with nothing else than the laws of the pro- 
duction and the distribution of wealth, as determined 
at any time and place by the constitution of man and 
the physical universe then and there, — has gradually 
been clearing itself from all complicating materials, and 



378 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

in the severely scientific treatises of sucli writers as the 
late Professors Cairnes and Jevons has at last attained 
the solid proportions of a compact and demonstrative 
science. 

Now it happens that the main discoveries or con- 
clusions of economical science during the last hundred 
years have been adverse to State interference. The 
doctrine favourable to recognising the claims of colonies 
to self -taxation ; the doctrine which overthrew all such 
impediments to commerce as protective tariffs and 
navigation laws, and which abolished the old Poor 
Law with its artificial obstructions to a free circulation 
of labour, and with its monstrous system of supple- 
menting wages out of the poor-rate, of encouraging 
improvident marriages, and of granting indiscriminate 
out-door relief ; and the doctrines which have recognised, 
within just limits, the right of labourers to free com- 
bination ; — these several doctrines have been alike in 
this, that they have marked out clear and definite limits 
to the beneficial activity of Government, and in every 
case this activity has been theoretically contracted 
rather than enlarged. 

The result has been that there has gradually grown 
up, in the consciousness of the population of European 
countries generally, an entirely novel sentiment as to 
the position and functions of the State. In the older 
political systems, whether of the classical or the modern 
world, the only oppositions known were those of the 
State to the private citizen or perhaps of the State 
to the chartered corporation. In the new era inde- 
pendent forces are recognised of a kind which wholly 
differ from those centering in any individual person or 
wielded by any aggregate body of persons, and which are 



SOCIALIST DOCTEINES. 379 

yet capable of assuming a position of lasting antagonism 
to the State. The question, indeed, is being asked 
whether, in view of these stupendous, yet highly 
organised, independent, forces, future civilisation will 
leave anything foT government to do, except to punish 
occasional crimes, to protect property, to collect taxes, 
and to superintend the conduct of relations with foreign 
Powers. 

The modern growth of what may be characterised 
under the generic name of Socialism is partly a product, 
and partly a contemporaneous symptom, of this novel 
attitude towards the State. The outburst of Socialism 
in its various forms in the different countries of Europe, 
and under the different titles of Nihilism, Interna- 
tionalism, Communism, and Socialism (in a special 
sense), while it is directly due, in each particular coun- 
try, to actual misgovernment or to well-founded or 
ill-founded discontent with the existing government, 
really has its roots in the same soil as that which, in 
England, favours a disparaging view of the usefulness 
of government in the abstract. 

The discovery has been made, with almost staggering 
suddenness, in some countries, that government is not 
the mysterious circumambient entity which, by some 
eternal necessity, wraps in impenetrable folds the very 
consciousness of all men at every moment of life from 
its beginning to its close. It is found that govern- 
ment is an historical institution, like any other growth 
of time and circumstances ; that governments can be 
either good or bad, and that most governments have 
hitherto been very bad, and that many still are so ; 
that governments, however, as they may be criticised 
and compared one with another, can also be altered 



380 . THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

and improved ; that the bulk of the population of all 
countries have^ in common with each other, a more 
pressing interest that governments generally should 
not do harm than that time and energy should be 
expended (perhaps fruitlessly) in trying to make par- 
ticular governments do all the possible good within 
their reach ; that, finally, inasmuch as the bulk of 
mankind must be poor, in any dividing of the world's 
goods, property is, in the view of this large portion of the 
race, to be held a matter of subordinate account, and 
its interests are to be always subordinated to claims of 
more universal concern. 

Such are the common postulates on which the so- 
cialistic conception of the world now actually held by 
no insignificant number of persons in Germany, Russia, 
Italy, and France, is based. The proportion of socialists 
is probably least in England, America, Belgium, Holland, 
Switzerland, and Greece ; and these are just the countries 
in which government is, — ^^in profession, if not always in 
fact, — most thoroughly popularised, and in which there 
is the least place for the notion of a standing antagonism 
between the people and the Government. 

So far, however, as Socialism diifuses an indirect 
influence on countries little affected by it directly, that 
influence operates in favour of bringing into antithesis 
the organisation of the State and the spontaneous 
organisation, for all sorts of purposes, of the population 
regarded as outside the State. The conclusions of 
modern political economy, already adverted to, tend in 
the same direction ; and it may be said, generally, that 
now for the first time government is put upon its trial, 
and required to justify its retention of a hold upon any 
part of human activity, — and to justify it on exactly 



ARGUMENTS RESTRICTING PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT. 381 

such grounds as would supply a logical test of the 
justice of any other usurpation on human liberty. 

The extreme view in favour of restricting the limits 
of State activity has been most ably argued for several 
years past by Mr. Herbert Speucer, the founder of a 
school of thought on the subject. He has discerned in 
the habits of modern society a disposition to have 
recourse to government for the supply of all its corporate 
wants, and to be neglectful of the disadvantages of all 
State interference, as well as the relaxed habits of mind 
which dependence on government creates and fosters. 

The result is the multiplication of laws, and the end- 
less generation of legal and administrative mechanism. 
The police force has to be indefinitely enlarged, and 
ever new and incompatible duties are cast upon it, the 
number of the ofllcials required involving a deterioration 
in their quality and attainments. So soon as a popular 
working majority is obtained, the conversion of any 
project into law is only a matter of sufficient publica- 
tion by the Press, and, thereupon, the minority becomes 
bound. It is bound, too, beyond the hope of deliverance ; 
because, whatever the amount of opposition to a law 
before its enactment, after its enactment all the forces 
of conservative loyalty, as well as of the new interests 
springing from its mere operation, begin to work in its 
favour. 

In this way it is contended that there is no limit to 
the possible trespasses on human liberty. The result 
is the more disastrous from the very insufficient know- 
ledge and thought through which new projects obtain an 
extraordinary popularity. If they become encrusted 
upon the social system through the agency of law, all 



382 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

those fine modifications and delicate adaptations which 
increasing experience is sure to suggest, and, if un- 
impeded, to introduce, become impossible. The only 
substitute for them is found in some more or less com- 
prehensive amendments, introduced at long intervals in 
a spirit of reaction, and often enough, through their 
inelastic character, working as much evil in the new 
direction as the unamended law worked in the old. 

To these more latent disadvantages are to be added 
the greater expense involved in all work conducted by 
a cumbrous Government Board; the insuperable diflB- 
culty of securing effectual control in the true interests 
of the public ; the opportunities opened out for cor- 
ruption and crooked dealings of all sorts ; the multiplica- 
tion of oflBcials ; and the consolidation of a bureaucratic 
interest, which universal experience proves to operate 
adversely to the general welfare. 

Writers of the class of which Mr. Herbert Spencer 
is the most eminent English representative take as an 
illustration of these evils the working of a government 
Poor-law, and of the laws which are passed from time 
to time for the purpose of checking the spread of 
disease. It is argued that any State measure for the 
relief of the poor must tend to nurture pauperism, by 
insuring every one against the consequences of his own 
imprudence or idleness or vice ; while, from the mere 
fact of its assuming the form of an universal organisa- 
tion, hardened and blunted by its legal form, it must 
fail generally to meet just those cases of undeserved 
misfortune and want which only the discerning hand 
of voluntary charity can relieve adequately and de- 
licately without leaving any vicious results behind. 

In a somewhat different way special legislation for 



EVILS OF GOVERNMENT INTEKVENTION. 383 

the prevention of any particular disease tends to pc^'- 
petuate the views of that disease and its remedies which 
are prevalent, at the moment of legislation, among that 
section of the medical profession which has succeeded 
in gaining the ear of Government. If new views, or a 
modified method of treatment, gradually comes to the 
front, — owing to the subsidence of panic or to the 
larger knowledge derived from the longer pursuit of 
comparative methods of enquiry perhaps conducted in 
other countries, — they can hardly hold their footing 
against the robust institutions, the multiplied and 
interested officials, the fixedly conventional notions, 
which owe a fortuitous but unassailable strength to the 
old law. 

To these obvious disadvantages of excessive govern- 
mental intervention are opposed the benefits which might 
flow from independent action. There are few fields of 
human energy, it is contended, in which perfect freedom 
does not in time vindicate the worth of its pretensions. 
The power of associated labour may be rendered as 
effective when wielded by private persons, freely and 
voluntarily combining together, as when exerted by the 
State. If there is wanting the compulsion of law, the 
defect is more than compensated by the superior dis- 
cernment and not less potent pressure of a vigilant 
public opinion. 

At the same time, voluntary agency provides for 
indefinitely wider openings to fresh discoveries, new 
departures, modified schemes, and continuous trans- 
mutations of plans, even to the finest degree of delicate 
variation. Habits of espionage and police tyranny are 
excluded, public corruption is impossible, expenses are 
kept within the smallest limits, and work is distributed 



384 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

in tlie ^YaJ likely to promote tlie utmost amount of 
economical eflSciency. Some political theorists, indeed, 
are so fascinated witli their conception of the incom- 
parable value of private action as to wish to with- 
draw from the State even the management of purely 
mechanical departments of the administrative authority 
such as the Post Office and the Telegraph department, 
leaving to the Government little else than the adminis- 
tration of Justice and the management of the Army and 
Navy. 

The opposite view, in favour of extending to the 
utmost the functions of government, is professed, — 
practically^ if not theoretically, — in some of the older 
Continental countries, such as France and Germany, 
which have only recently emerged out of the condition 
of a feudal monarchy, and in the Australian colonies 
of Great Britain. The grounds of this favour shown to 
government action are, however, very different in the 
European and in the Australian instances. 

In France and Germany, in spite of the social and 
revolutionary storms which, in very different forms, 
have swept over both countries within the present 
century, a real constitutional opposition between the 
people and the Government, such as was described 
above as having discovered itself in England some three 
or four centuries ago, and as having gained strength 
and distinctness ever since, has hardly yet been mani- 
fested. Even in the most tempestuous crises of the 
first French Eevolution the question was not one of 
popular resistance to Government as such, but of who 
were to get the Government into their own hands. 
The later Socialistic and Communistic movements, as 
already shown, have been of a different stamp 3 but their 



BUKEAUCKATIC POLICE SYSTEMS. 385 

influence on tlie broad field of politics is only beginning 
to be felt. 

At the latter end of the past century, and for 
the first half of the present one, the schemes of all 
political reformers, both in France and Germany, have 
been devised so as to vrork through Government and 
not independently of it and against it. In neither 
country has there been even yet witnessed, on a con- 
spicuous platform, any of that firm resistance to the 
encroachments of government in the name of broad 
human or alleged constitutional or moral rights, with 
which the history of the English race, at home and on 
the continent of America, is so notably distinguished. 

The result is that^ while the form of the government 
is in both countries matter of urgent popular concern, 
and has in France undergone repeated changes, with 
every kind and degree of manifestation of popular 
enthusiasm, the functions of government and the limits 
of individual liberty have hardly attracted attention 
elsewhere than in the little-studied Treatises of such 
closet students as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Auguste 
Comte. 

In France and Germany, there is to be found all 
the apparatus of representative government ; and in 
France even the forms of purely republican institutions. 
Yet in both countries the power of the executive 
authority, in the shape of a highly organised and 
bureau cratically managed police system, renders in- 
dividual liberty little less precarious than it could be 
under an absolute despotism; the only difference being 
due to the possibility of bringing outrageous trespasses 
on liberty under the notice of the Press and the repre- 



386 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

sentative assembly. But this relief can only apply to 
a scanty number of exceptional acts of violence, and 
affords no remedy to the crushing weight of fear and 
self-distrust which an ubiquitous and irresponsible 
police imposes on the most dependent, — that is, on the 
most numerous and needy, — classes of the community. 

Both in France and Germany, again, the military 
habits and antecedents of the two countries co-operate 
with the traditional subservience of the people to the 
Government of the day to make it seem natural that 
all work that wants doing, and can be bettei done on a 
large than on a small scale, should be done, as of course, 
by the Government. Hence the extent of government 
interference in all the affairs of life, the recognised 
right and duty of Government to manage the locomotion 
of the country, the restrictions on the right of free 
testamentary disposition, and the highly centralised 
superintendence of education, of health, and of purely 
local affairs, scarcely even excites discontent or criticism. 
The right of absorbing such affairs into its own hands 
is practically assumed to be of the essence of all govern- 
ment, and if any field of action is to be cut off from the 
government domain a presumption has to be rebutted 
which is of considerable, and often of insuperable, 
strength. 

The case of the Australian colonies, in which, like- 
wise, the extension of government activity is very wide, 
is different and peculiar. The habit of depending on 
Government was formed in the oldest colony, — that of 
New South Wales, — during the existence of the colony 
as a convict settlement. In those days the whole 
country was a diffused prison, the free emigrants being 
only scattered loosely about among a population con- 



PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT IN COLONIES. 387 

sisting of prisoners, soldiers, officers, magistrates, and 
gaolers. 

In this state of things all public works were 
naturally and necessarily undertaken by Government, 
and were almost exclusively constructed by convict 
labour. The older public buildings, the harbour works, 
and the fine broad roads stretching for hundreds of 
miles across the Blue Mountains into the interior, and 
from one end of what was then Van Diemen's Land to 
the other, were thus called into being. The provision 
for Public Worship and for Education, such as it was, 
was solely governmental; and the financial economy 
of the country was managed almost as directly from 
the centre of government at home as in the case of the 
convict establishments at Portland and Dartmoor. 

So soon as, in 1855, New South Wales and its 
separated sister colony, Victoria, obtained the grant of 
free parliamentary institutions and a popular repre- 
sentative government,- -the Crown yielding to the 
Colonial Government its prerogative rights in the soil, — 
the population of the colony, as represented in the 
Colonial Legislatures, instantly stepped into the place 
of the British Government at home. But, as soon as 
this transformation was effected the new colonial 
Government acquired all the rights, privileges, and 
inherited traditions of the British Government which 
had preceded it; and, acting, as it did, in the name of 
popular constituencies no longer at an indefinite dis- 
tance, could and must needs personate the whole 
people in providing for the urgent wants of the still 
immature settlement. 

In the meantime the constant sale of government 
lands, and the incoming rental from pastoral lease- 



388 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

holds, brought money into the hands of the Govern- 
ment which, there being as yet no debt, it conld not 
but expend on the improvement of the colony. The 
consequence was the incessant struggle in Parliament 
between the representatives of one district or township 
and another, for works snch as roads, harbours, rail- 
ways, bridges, waterworks, public buildings, and public 
libraries, to be done at the expense of the central 
colonial government. The times of this surplus national 
wealth and freedom from debt are rapidly passing away 
in all the colonies, and perhaps the effect may be the 
adoption of new principles of regulating government 
intervention. 

The real province of government in opening out 
a new colony rather belongs to a subject already dis- 
cussed, — the ^ Government of Dependencies.' But it 
may be said here that while the habit of leaning on 
Government for every kind of public enterprise which 
could be undertaken better, more cheaply, and with 
less friction, by private co-operation is demoralising in 
the extreme, there are some classes of works, such as 
roads, railways, and the convenient planning out of 
new towns which, if left to the chances of a fluctuating 
and partial demand for them, instead of being well 
made once for all in the common interests of all, 
posterity included, may entail disastrous consequences 
in the future which can never be undone. 

From this review of the actual position of the 
oldest and newest communities in the world with re- 
spect to government interference, it results that all 
States are largely committed in practice to govern- 
mental intervention in a vast number of matters which 



LIMITS OF GOVEENMENT INTERVENTION. 389 

certainly could be undertaken by private persons, acting 
either individually or in voluntary combinations. 

Tlius the question can hardly be treated as though it 
were a uew one now propounded for the first time. The 
case rather is, that a practical answer has long been 
given to it, and the world has been fashioned in habit and 
sentiment to the artificial conditions thereby created. 
It may be bad to recognise the legal right of the poor 
to relief at the hands of the State ; but if such right 
has been recognised for generations, and if economical 
and social conditions have adjusted themselves to this 
state of things, it may be impossible to annul the right, 
or to do more than restrict and rigidly define it, or, 
at the most, to ascertain the true conditions on which 
alone it can be any longer recognised. 

So with the right to have all classes of contracts 
enforced by law. It might have been a question once 
whether the legal enforcement of all contracts was 
really favourable to public morality and did not tend to 
substitute an outward and more easily evaded sanction 
for an inward and more searching sanction of inexor- 
able authority. But, as things have been from the 
foundation of existing States, contract-law has been a 
prominent part of all law; and society, commerce, 
industry, and civil relationships of all kinds, have been 
built up on the supposition that contracts will be 
enforced in Courts of Justice. Thus this expectation 
of the intervention of the State for the support of 
the validity of contracts must now be treated by the 
statesman as one of the ultimate, — even though artifi- 
cially produced, — facts of man's nature ; and as such he 
must provide for its claims, though he may slowly 
attempt, if he pleases, to modify this expectation. 



390 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

To understand how it comes about tliat^ at a 
certain stage in tlie history of a political community, 
the limits of Governmental interference may have to 
be readjusted, it is necessary to make some historical 
reflections. 

At the outset of political life, v^hen the population 
has become settled within definite territorial limits ; 
when agricultural habits have succeeded to those of a 
nomad or pastoral type ; when the coalition of tribes is 
developing a monarchical form of Government, and 
when the civilisation is becoming refined and established 
by the foundation of towns, there are present certain 
predominant political conditions, which gradually fade 
away as the community advances, and, at a certain stage 
of its progress, wholly disappear. Such conditions are, 
first, the indefinite amount of available land in proportion 
to the needs of a population, sparse, and as yet in- 
disposed to steady agricultural pursuits ; secondly, the 
equable distribution of such elementary kinds of wealth 
as are alone appreciated at this early stage of society, 
and the consequent absence of a large pauper class; 
thirdly, the eminent superiority of the small governing 
class in respect of knowledge, practical capacity, and 
political foresight, over all the rest of the community ; 
fourthly, the ignorance, which prevails generally and 
extends to the governing class, of the laws of wealth 
and of all those scientific principles of Government 
which nothing but long experience could discover or 
historical reading communicate. 

As the community advances, all these conditions 
undergo continuous, though scarcely perceived, changes 
till at last they are almost reversed. Except in the 
rare case of incessant colonisation or annexation of 



PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT RE-ADJUSTED. 391 

fresh territory, the population gains on the land, while 
the national improvement at all points enables the 
larger population to demand far more of the same land 
than the simpler resources of early society could even 
suggest. Wealth becomes more and more unequally 
distributed, till the physical and moral power of the 
society is shifted from the few to the many, the prin- 
ciples and basis of Government undergoing a corre- 
sponding transformation, and a pauper problem being 
always at hand, and ready to attain alarming propor- 
tions. 

Gradually, too, the knowledge and thought of the 
society, even in respect of purely political matters, is 
found also outside the group of persons on whom the 
task of- Government devolves, and these persons have 
increasingly to take their instruction and e\en their 
orders from the outside public, rather than to impose 
on others the unquestioned results of their private 
lucubrations. Lastly, economic principles are dis- 
covered, false doctrines are finally exploded, and the 
reign of capricious conjecture as to the consequences of 
large classes of legislation, — such as that relating to 
crime, taxation, health, sumptuary matters, and reli- 
gion, — is at end. 

It is not making too large an assumption in 
favour of many modern States, including nearly all the 
European ones, to assert that the later stage here 
indicated has been already attained. In such States 
as England, France, Germany, and Italy land has 
become inconceivably precious when viewed in the light 
of the population which in these several countries 
claims to have its residence upon it and its support 
out of it. 



392 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

The reciprocally opposed conditions of tlie few who 
are very rich, of the many who are just free from 
solicitude about the means of existence, and of the 
too large class of the very poor, present problems, 
social and political, which strain to the utmost the 
sagacity and scientific acquirements of the modern 
Statesman. The governing class, again, are finding 
themselves no longer masters but servants, and are 
bound to learn of others rather than to propound what 
doctrines they please. In the meantime Political 
Economy, in spite of its unscientific treatment in many 
quarters, has laid down principles of taxation, of cur- 
rency, of commercial freedom, and of poor relief, which 
no statesman or legislative assemblj^ could any longer 
dare either to remain ignorant of or to disown in 
practice. 

The result is that, while existing facts, and conditions 
or predispositions resulting from the past, must be 
recognised by statesmen as the material with which 
they have to deal, it is no argument for the retention 
of any principle of Government that it suited a different 
and earlier state of society. In mapping out afresh, 
in these days, the province of Government, it is of the 
utmost importance to bear this in mind, because it 
is here, perhaps more than anywhere else, that the 
reversed condition of society has its most important 
bearing. 

For instance, the only apology which could be 
made in England, in the reign of the later Planta- 
genets and the Tudors, for the sumptuary laws and the 
laws regulating wages and Poor relief was, that the 
Government which devised the laws knew better than 
the persons to whom the laws were addressed what was 



PKOVINCE OF GOVERNMENT RE-ADJUSTED. 393 

the fitting private expenditure for dress, what was the 
right rate of wages, what were the best means of re- 
stricting pauperism. It is now established as a scien- 
tific fact that in all these matters the Government was 
wholly mistaken either in its apprehensions of economic 
principle, or in its interference, and generally in both ; 
so that it erred, in interfering for an object which was 
itself bad. 

In the present day, neither the executive govern- 
ment nor any popular assembly in an European State 
would affect to act independently of reference to 
principles of political economy established elsewhere, 
though often misconceived or mis-cited; nor would 
they assume that they contained within their own body 
an exclusive monopoly of the wisdom of the country. 
The whole representative system of popular govern- 
ment is opposed to any such conception ; and, as 
government becomes more and more popular, and the 
people better educated, the proportions of knowledge 
between the governing classes and those they repre- 
sent will be more and more altered, in a way unfavour- 
able to the former. Those who govern will need to be 
specialists in their own art, but, for that very reason, 
they will be less and less well equipped with doctrines 
concerning broad masses of knowledge on which in- 
formation is from time to time needed for their due 
co-ordination to a political end. 

Hereafter those who govern will cease altogether to 
be presumed to be wiser or better than the rest of the 
community. They will merely enjoy the privilege oi' 
servinor it. In the discharn^e of this task of service 
their first duty will be of the negative kind, implied in 
merely protecting the large but important classes of 



394 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

the community who, owing to the unequal distribution 
of wealth, are likely to suffer certain peculiar dis- 
advantages from which they have a moral claim to be 
exempted. 

Such disadvantages may come (1) from the absorp- 
tion of the soil of the country in a few hands ; (2) from 
accidental oversights in the modes of imposing or of 
distributing social burdens, particularly of a financial 
kind ; (3) from monopolies of the means of locomotion 
or of communication ; (4) from a neglect, on the pari 
of the few, of the conditions of public health affecting 
the many ; (5) from the weight of associations of 
persons forming influential commercial organisations, 
and having large amounts of capital at their disposal ; 
and (6) lastly, from the pressure of large religious 
organisations which, through the hold they too readily 
obtain on conventional sentiment, are a continual 
menace to individual liberty. 

With a view to the orderly examination of each of 
these possible subjects of a State intervention under- 
taken for the purely negative end of protecting the 
more dependent and numerous portion of the com- 
munity against a variety of classes which, in a pro- 
gressive society, tend to become increasingly influential 
and overpowering, it will be convenient to exhibit them 
in a brief tabular form, as follows : 

State intervention may be justified on behalf of 
its negative purpose of protecting the dependent and 
more numerous portion of the community in respect 
of 

(1) The absorption of the National Soil. 

(2) The unequal distribution of Social Burdens. 



LIMITS OF STATE INTERVENTION. 395 

(3) The monopoly of tlie means of Locomotion 

and of Communication. 

(4) Public Health. 

(5) The power and undue influence of Commercial 

companies, Industrial organisations, and 
large Capitalists. 

(6) The power and undue influence of Churches 

and Religious Associations. 

(1) The National Soil.- -It has already been 
pointed out that, in default of incessant annexation 
of adjoining territory or special facilities and aptitude 
for colonisation, the amount of available land always 
tends to become disproportioned to the wants of the 
population. Superior organisation of the modes of 
living, the growth of towns, the introduction of superior 
methods of cultivating the soil, and, most of all, free 
commercial intercourse between country and country, — • 
especially in respect of the necessaries of life, — make it 
possible for this growing insufiiciency of the soil to be 
long overlooked. 

But, at the same time that these facts are dis- 
closing their consequences, the growth of capital, and 
its inevitable tendency to get concentrated in a few 
hands, lead to the land being absorbed into the hands 
of an ever diminishing class. Here again the pheno- 
menon is long disguised through the general improve- 
ment in all classes of the community, and the more 
diffused acquisition of small landed properties, though 
at a far slower rate of advance than the rate of accu- 
mulation of large properties in the hands of a few. 
Of course, in countries such as those still partially 
feudalised, like England, where the policy of the law is 



396 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

in favour of hereditary ownership, and the transfer of 
land in the market is hampered by artificial fetters, 
the concentration of land does not strictly follow the 
concentration of capital, although, so far as the com- 
peting claims of the bulk of the population go, it pro- 
ceeds just the same, and this, too, in a form still more 
unserviceable from an economic point of view. 

The logical and necessary consequence is, that the 
mass of the population not only cease to be landholders 
themselves, but, owing to the necessity they are under 
of living on the soil and, — in the case of a large pro- 
portion of them, — =of earning a livelihood by its culti- 
vation, they are in an ever growing danger of being 
servilely dependent on the proprietors of the land. 
This dependence, which is brought about by the play 
of purely economical conditions, is of a very different 
kind from that dependence of serfdom or villenage 
which is found at an earlier stage of society, and which 
is due to a very different class of causes. 

In that relationship of agrarian dependence which 
results from nothing else than the absorption of the 
national soil by a limited class of the community, there 
are no sentiments of moral reciprocity, of personal 
allegiance and protection, to soften the grating hardness 
of economical competition. There is not even, of neces- 
sity, the difference of education or of social antecedents 
to interpose a sort of natural and impassable barrier 
between the proprietor and his tenant or labourer. 

Apart from new laws made to meet the new emer- 
gency as it arises, there is little to prevent the land 
proprietor, — whose command of the market which 
supplies tenants and labourers is only restricted by the 
possible rivalry of an easily assigTaable number of other 



LIMITS TO LAND LEGISLATION. 397 

proprietors like himself, and whose interests are iden- 
tically the same as his own, — from accepting what 
tenants, exactin^^ what rent, making what bargains, 
or paying what wages, he pleases. 

In one and another country of Europe a condi- 
tion such as this has been nearly attained through the 
mere regular operation of the causes, — such as those 
of over-population and the concentration of capital, — 
which have been just adverted to. 

In some countries, such as France just before the 
first Revolution, and Germany before the reforms usually 
attributed to Stein, the persistent endurance, in a semi- 
fossilised form, of feudal institutions and relationships, 
helped to precipitate a catastrophe w^hich the mere 
development of modern commerce would, of itself, have 
in no long time brought about. 

In some provinces of British India a similar crisis 
has been reached by the mere agency, for the most 
part beneficial, of the Government itself. It has not 
been so much that j)opulation has grown out of pro- 
portion to the available supply of land, as that the 
greater preservation of life, brought about by exemption 
from war and from other means of wide-reaching de- 
struction, has been equivalent to a sudden growth of 
population. The British Government itself made the 
mistake of prematurely dissolving the system of village 
proprietorship, and of substituting the practical pro- 
prietorship of an intermediary, — a tenant, on the one 
hand, of their own, but, on the other hand, an indepen- 
dent capitalist, who, by advancing money on exorbitant 
terms to the sub-tenants, gradually brought them 
wholly under his power. It is to this state of things 

that the Government has recently been addresping 
18 



398 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

itself, by measures of land-reform favourable in an 
almost unprecedented degree to the sub-tenants and 
actual cultivators of the soil. 

The land problem in Ireland is only a small fraction 
of the general problem here stated, and it is owing to 
some exceptional historical incidents in the relations of 
England and Ireland that it has, perhaps prematurely, 
been thrust into prominence, and attained such por- 
tentous proportions. 

In Ireland all the causes which, in other countries, 
have usually worked singly, or by twos or threes, 
towards producing a disproportion between the claims 
of the people and the supply of land, have worked in 
combination and contemporaneously. Owing to physical 
peculiarities, the land available for cultivation is com- 
paratively small in quantity, the uses to which it can 
be turned are limited, and the improvement of which 
it is susceptible is less than in most other countries 
having an equal population at the same stage of civili- 
sation. 

It also happens that both imported feudalism in 
respect of the hereditary proprietorship of large estates, 
and the concentration of commercial capital, have com- 
bined together to aggravate each other as causes for 
the withdrawal of the soil from the hands of the people. 
It further happens that, whether from the indestructible 
instinct of territorial clanship, or from an inherited 
indisposition for all pursuits other than a superficial 
cultivation of the soil, the ' hunger ' for land on the 
part of the bulk of the Irish population seems to be of 
a peculiarly insatiable kind. 

All these conditions, taken together, have precipi- 
tated in Ireland a crisis which must come sooner or 



LIMITS TO LAND LEGISLATION. 399 

later in all old countries, tliougli the absorption of 
labour in manufactures, the extension of towns, the 
popularity of emigration, or the sudden opening out of 
new fields of largely remunerative labour, such as the 
construction of railways or the working of a new gold 
district, may long defer its arrival. 

The universal problem is, of course, further per- 
plexed by the fact that there are many points in which 
the analogy of movable property is not applicable to 
land, and therefore the duties and rights of govern- 
ment in the matter have to be considered now for the 
first time, without deriving any help either from ancient 
precedent or from recognised principles of policy in 
respect of other species of property. 

The sentiment of an owner or even of an occupier 
of land is capable of acquiring a peculiar colour and 
intensity. It may, and does in countless cases, associate 
itself with the recollections of a lifetime and, through 
the practice of hereditary transmission, with the sense 
of continuity of relationship and with affectionate asso- 
ciations of the most ineffaceable kind. Nor can the 
State afford to treat sentiments like these as being of 
no account, or to tamper with them too recklessly in 
legislation. Such feelings, diffused throughout a popu- 
lation, afford the strongest guarantee for loyalty and 
patriotism. They connect together the successive gene- 
rations of the life of the State, and are among the 
richest of the elements which contribute to mould the 
national consciousness of the people and to ensure 
stability for their traditional institutions. 

But such considerations as these are rather an 
argument for distributing the ownership of land as 
widely as possible than for acquiescing in its continued 



400 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

and accidental absorption by a few. True it is that^ to 
arrest the process of accumnlation, some stringent policy 
may have momentarily to be resorted to which will, in 
some quarters, awaken the cry of ' confiscation.' But, 
if the step is delayed, the problem can only increase 
in magnitude, and its solution be attended with ever 
greater diflBculty and apparent, if not real, injustice and 
hardship. Happy are those countries in which the 
inevitable problem is seen afar oflP, and the absolute 
claim of the State to deal unrestrictedly with the national 
soil, in the interests of itself and of all classes of the 
community, is early recognised. 

It is unfortunate that in the British colonies in 
Australia the rights and the duties of the State in 
respect of the enormous tracts of land within its control 
have been very imperfectly recognised ; and this too at 
an early era in the growth of the colonies, when the 
government could have taken its own way with the 
smallest possible injury to existing interests. 

The general practice pursued in most of the colonies, 
including New South Wales and Victoria, has been, so 
far as the agricultural settlements have gone, to sell 
the land absolutely at a cheap rate, most favourable 
terms being devised for the payment of the purchase 
money. The result is that as time goes on, and unless 
the policy is reversed, all the best land for agricultural 
and building purposes will be in the hands of a limited 
number of persons, who, by natural processes of accu- 
mulation and concentration, will tend to become fewer 
and fewer. 

The same problem which has racked the brains 
and st]*ained the consciences of European statesmen 
will be always hanging over these colonies; and one 



AGEAEIAN PROBLEMS OF EOME. 401 

day it will have to be solved, as elsewhere, either by 
confiscation, or by revolution, or by both together. A 
simple substitution of long leases from the State for 
absolute sales, with rights of renewal or re-valuation, 
coupled, perhaps, with provisions against undue accu- 
mulation, would have been open to no fair objection at 
the time, and would have prevented difficulties scarcely 
as yet conceivable in the future. 

In contrast to these modern agrarian problems and 
to the now recognised mode of their solution by decisive 
State interference, it is instructive to recall the agrarian 
problems of Rome, which were due to causes both like 
and unlike. 

In the later days of the Roman Republic the large 
national domains were for the most part occupied 
by rich capitalists who either paid a merely nominal 
rent to the State or evaded payment of rent altogether. 
These lands were cultivated by slaves, and the bulk of the 
free Roman people were being gradually excluded from 
the use and ownership of the land of Italy altogether. 
The successive agrarian movements and seditions which 
took place in consequence are remembered by all. 
Passing remedies were found in the acquisition and 
distribution of newly conquered or forfeited lands among 
the people, in colonisation, and in the absorption of 
the population in military expeditions and interests. 
But these remedies were insufficient, and the result 
appeared in the Servile wars, in the exhaustion of the 
treasury by grants of corn to the populace, and in the 
social disintegration which rendered the Republic an 
anachronism and the Empire the sole salvation of 
society. 



402 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

(2) Public Burdens. — One of the natural conse- 
quences of tlie -unequal distribution of wealth, brought 
about, to an ever increasing extent, in the progress of 
civilisation, is the unequal distribution of social burdens, 
especially th'ose of a financial kind. As society becomes 
organised the necessity for regular contributions, or at 
least of periodic contributions, devised on a systematic 
plan makes itself felt. 

In very primitive times the mode of levying con- 
tributions for the expenses of the State is of the rudest 
sort and scarcely goes beyond free gifts in kind, personal 
military service, and the concession of peculiar rights in 
the soil. As tribal chieftainship develops into national 
kingship, and government acquires greater complexity, 
the king, as representing the government, attracts to 
himself a number of prerogative rights of the nature 
of monopolies, exemptions, pre-emptions, and persojial 
dues, which it becomes the first business of a popular 
representative assembly, as it emerges into existence, 
to ascertain and to restrict. 

There thus conies about a re- distribution of the func- 
tions which are directed to supporting the mechanical 
business of Government. Their course is no longer 
left to be determined by the accidental institutions of 
a primitive society. The popular will is consulted, — 
or, at least, a show of consulting it takes place, — and 
some broad theories of public obligation and of general 
taxation are acted on, if not formulated. Nevertheless, 
in the course of conducting this secondary adjustment, 
which will proceed slowly and almost unconsciously, it 
is always probable that the bulk of the population, that 
is the less moneyed classes, will be disproportionately 
burdened in comparison with the more moneyed classes. 



DISTKIBUTION OF PUBLIC BUKDENS. 403 

According to any numerical statement of the mode of 
distribution, it may be hard to demonstrate the unfair- 
ness, because any numerical statement must proceed 
upon the basis that the elementary units of money, time, 
and labour, are of the same value for one person as they 
are for another. But there are large classes of society for 
which any taxation whatever, any increase in the price 
of the necessaries of life, any withdrawal of marketable 
time or labour, may mean either utter destitution or 
such loss and accompanying anxiety as can have no 
counterpart in the privations incurred by their more 
fortunate fellow countrymen through their share of the 
public burdens. 

An illustration of this is supplied by France before 
the j&rst Revolution, when some of the wealthiest 
classes of society were wholly exempt from taxation, 
and the poorest classes were crushed by its incidence 
in innumerable grinding forms. A sort of morbid con- 
gestion of wealth had set in, in consequence of long 
years of feebleness and corruption on the part of the 
central Government, and the causes must rather be 
sought in the continued impotency of the multitude 
than in any intentional policy of oppression on the part 
of the more favoured classes. 

Another illustration equally apposite was found in 
the indisposition of the landowning and farming classes 
of England to risk any loss themselves for the purpose 
of saving a considerable portion of the population from 
the suffering, loss, and pauperism brought about by a 
purely artificial system of excluding the importation of 
foreign corn. The loss (such as it was) to the well to- 
do agricultural classes meant, at the most, a deprivation 
of certain luxuries and comforts, and perhaps, in the 



404 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

case of the more needy among them, of some of the 
conveniences of life. To the mass of the population 
a difference in the price of bread meant the difference 
between sordidness and decency, penury and independ- 
ence, health and sickness, life and death. Yet it re- 
quired all the energy of a Minister of rare independence, 
and commanding a strong Government, to overcome 
the social and political influences which weighed so 
heavily against the many and in favour of the few. 

It is sometimes said or thought that the progress of 
popular institutions will tend to adjust the burdens 
of the country in such a way that the richer classes will 
be overborne and the bulk of the people exempted even 
from their proper and equitable share. Such a state 
of things might be brought about under a dominion of 
pure mob rule, where all social and political organisa- 
tion is lost sight of, and the voice of the loudest and 
most numerous has unrestricted sway. But this is a 
disease of the body politic which has its own special 
causes, symptoms, and remedies. It has nothing to do 
with the healthful condition of a State resting on the 
broadest basis of popular government. 

In such a government, the highly organised, edu- 
cated, and leisurely (because wealthy) classes will 
always tend to become supreme and to override all 
other classes in the community. It is, then, in such 
circumstances the most indisputable province of govern- 
ment to effect a counterpoise to these influences, and 
to secure an equable distribution of all kinds of 
burdens, so that the actual amount of sacrifice to the 
support of the State be, not only quantitatively but, 
really proportioned to the means of each. 



PUBLIC FACILITIES FOR LOCOMOTION. 405 

(3) Locomotion and Communication.— The ques- 
tion of the province of government in respect of loco- 
motion and of communication is, again, one which mnst 
be treated primarily from the point of view of the claims 
of the more dej^endent classes of society. It is these 
cLisses which, in the conflict of the economical forces, 
tend to become proportionately the most numerous, and 
which, if revolution is to be avoided, most need protec- 
tion at the hands of government. 

The modern means of locomotion and communica- 
tion by railways, by telegraphs, by telephones, and by 
steamships all tend, through the advantage they obtain 
from being conducted on a large scale, to produce 
practical monopolies. It needs no special concession of 
legal privileges to construct such naonopolies. They 
spring up of themselves by the mere force of accumu- 
lated and concentrated capital. The result is a short- 
lived competition between project and project, company 
and company, and, at last, the survival of the strongest 
or an adjustment of terms between two or more of the 
rivals. The ultimate sufferer is sure to be the public, 
and it may be that lar^ge classes of the public may 
suffer so much from the monopoly-prices and conditions 
that, while losing all the primitive means of locomotion 
and communication now superseded, they are equally 
excluded from the use of the improved means which 
everywhere have taken their place. 

It is here that the regulative duty of government 
finds its place. Government is bound to see that the 
bulk of the population, or even that considerable classes 
of the population, are not put at an undue disadvantage 
by the improvements of which the wealthier classes 
make so great and profitable a use. It may be a ques- 



406 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

tion whether this interference is best exercised by the 
government acquiring the actual proprietorship of the 
great undertakings in question, or whether it suffices to 
prescribe by general law, and by occasional legislation, 
and by acts of administration, w^hat enterprises shall be 
permitted, and on what conditions, and within what 
limits of time and place. 

The question of one or another mode of inter- 
position will turn upon political considerations which 
must vary with the occasion and the state of society. 
There is one problem for a largely extended territory, 
like that of the United States, where official corruption 
seems at present beyond the reach of any popular 
censure or means of detection, and another for a small 
territory like that of Belgium or of Switzerland, where 
every official concerned may be always subjected to 
microscopic supervision by the public. The problem, 
again, is different for new countries like the Australian 
colonies, where the government is able to proceed 
systematically and is bound to prevent opportunities 
being lost for ever by the self-interest of a few, and 
different for an old country like England, where rail- 
ways had already acquired a history and prescriptive 
rights before even Sir Robert Peel, in 1844, interposed 
to vind^'cate the claims of the State. The right of the 
State to interpose is indisputable. The dut}^, nature, 
and extent of its interposition at any particular time 
and place belongs to the Art, and not to the Science, 
of Politics. 

(4) Public Health. — The subject of Public Health, 
as belonging to the province of government, when 
scrutinised from the negative side, of protecting the 



GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH. 407 

dependent classes of the community, presents some 
peculiar difficulties. On the surface there would seem 
to be no matter to which the force of the whole com- 
munity, as wielded by government, could be more 
beneficially and safely directed than to the prevention 
of the indefinite spread of disease through the careless- 
ness or ignorance of a definite number of private 
persons easily brought within the control of law. Nor, 
indeed, is any difficulty, theoretical or practical^ experi- 
enced, so long as the intervention of government is 
restricted to those sanitary safeguards, or measures of 
precaution, as to the value of which a very large amount 
of popular agreement exists, and which in themselves 
are of so simple a nature that they can be carried out, 
or the neglect of them detected, without any undue 
intrusion on personal liberty. 

The ordinary requirements of efficient drainage in 
towns, of wholesome and decent accommodation for the 
poor in towns and country villages, of suitable fever 
hospitals small and large, with due provisions for the 
insulation of cases, of a plentiful supply of pure water, 
for purposes of drinking, washing, and bathing, and of 
open spaces in towns, all fall within a range of subjects 
which government can conveniently take under its con- 
trol with no more risk or loss than inevitably adheres 
to all government action, in the weakening of private 
energy, and in the autocratic, if not corrupt, agencies 
through which government must always do its work. 

But the progress of medical science in the present 
day, and the extraordinary popular influence, even in 
the political field, which all specialists acquire through 
the confidence reposed in them because of their indis- 
putable claims to attention in their own departments. 



408 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

have led to a dangerous extension of the province of 
government in this direction. 

It may be granted that^ if the whole population of 
a country could be handled like a regiment of soldiers 
or a company of prisoners, and could be subjected, at a 
doctor's will, to exactly equal conditions of life, not 
only might many of the worst diseases with which 
mankind is afflicted be kept at a distance, but many 
interesting experiments might be conducted for the 
purpose of elucidating the nature of certain diseases 
and of discovering their remedies. 

The common tendency of medical practitioners is 
to treat mankind in this way. The political mistake 
committed is two- fold. In the first place, in spite of 
the rapid metamorphoses which medical science is con- 
stantly undergoing, and the very unsettled and unsatis- 
factory condition to which it has, as yet, attained, the 
medical profession are always so enamoured with a new 
theory or discovery that, if they can only agree among 
themselves, they are prepared to avail themselves of all 
the forces of Government to compel the nation to 
conform to it, and to try their new-fledged theory or 
crotchet on the largest scale. 

In the second place, the medical profession, even 
when justified in recommending Government inter- 
vention for a sanitary end, are apt to pay no attention 
to the peculiar political dangers and inconveniences 
which this sort of intervention necessarily involves. 
For the doctor's purpose no sanitary measure is good 
for much if it is not universal and unflinchingly com- 
pulsory. But to make it either the one or the other 
there is needed an accomplished and ubiquitous police 
force, a vast extension of the magisterial jurisdiction. 



GOVERMIENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH. 409 

and a serious addition to that part of the law which, 
though not called criminal, has most of the penal 
character and consequences of criminal law without its 
solemnity of administration, and without jury-trial. 

When it is considered that the extension of police 
agency means the necessity of drawing the police from 
a lower stratum of society in order to fill the enlarged 
ranks, and that the necessity of a comprehensive exe- 
cution of the law means the large use of espionage and 
an absence of the securities accorded to an accused 
person in all real criminal proceedings, it is obvious 
that no sanitary measure of the kind here alluded to 
can be carried out without a very serious limitation of 
public liberty. 

The evil is likely to be aggravated in practice 
through the imperfect scientific knowledge on which so 
vast an organisation is often set to work, and the small 
amount of popular attention and vigilance it usually 
attracts at its earlier stages. It is an incubus fixed on 
the neck of the people, like the Old Man of the Sea on 
the back of Sindbad, before they are aware of it, and 
it is long before they can shake it off". An army of 
salaried officials is called into being, deep-rooted in- 
terests are created, national habits and practices become 
adjusted to a state of things which has been crystallised 
by the silent operation of unquestioned law, and even 
science itself is scarcely listened to when it lifts up its 
voice to revoke its own decrees. 

It must then, be laid down that, while the sanitary 
protection of the people against individual extrava- 
gances, recklessness, or perilous ignorance, is certainly 
within the true province of government, yet there 
should always be a strong antecedent presumj)tion 



^10 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

against the expediency of bringing any particular 
scheme within the range of governmental action; a 
presumption only to be removed when Science has said 
its last, and not only its first word, and when all the 
inconveniences of any government interference, for any 
purpose whatever, have been evaluated to the full. 

(5) Power and Influence of Commercial Com- 
panies.— There is one special sort of pressure against 
which the bulk of the community need the protection 
best supplied by government, and yet which often 
eludes attention. The progress of society and the accu- 
mulation of wealth tend to bring about the amalgama- 
tion of the wealthier members of the community into 
groups which take the form of industrial or commercial 
associations. These associations, which, in their modern 
form of Joint-Stock Companies, often include a vast 
number of persons whose names are unknown, but 
w^hose interests are all ono way, necessarily exert a 
considerable social and political influence, which may 
or may not tally with that of the bulk of the com- 
munity. Their wealth and cohesion are pretty sure to 
secure for them a disproportionate amount of repre- 
sentation in Parliament, the result of w^hich is that 
their interests are likely to be something more than 
adequately protected there. 

The railway interest, in England, is said to be thus 
superabundantly represented in the House of Commons, 
a consideration which is often found to be of no small 
importance when a movement is made for compulsory 
legislation for the reduction of fares, the prevention of 
accidents, and the increase of the speed of workmen's 
trains. In the same way it has been found that the 



GOVEENMENT AND PUBLIC COMPANIES. 411 

shipping interest is so largely represented that it is 
difficult to carry through any measure which benefits 
mariners at the expense of ship-owners. Similarly, the 
banking community is abundantly protected by its own 
representatives; and, both in and out of Parliament, 
the richer traders and shopkeepers make common cause 
for the suppression (if it might be) of the natural 
remedy against unfair prices found in co-operative 
stores. 

Against all such undue pressure as this, exerted by 
the mere power of associated wealth, and enterprise, it 
is within the province of Government to protect the 
great mass of the population who may be described as 
unmoneved. 

To accord such a protection might be a good reason 
in itself for a government to assume into its own 
hands the ownership and management of all the rail- 
ways. It might also justify the institution of savings 
banks, insurance societies, and a vast class of insti- 
tutions which, would, or might, be just not remu- 
nerative enough to attract private capital, owing to the 
amount of labour required in collecting small contribu- 
butions and performing small transactions, and yet 
which would involve very slight loss to the State. A 
vast number of such State institutions have long ex- 
isted in Italy; and England has, of late, entered on 
the same path. 

Of course it would be a misfortune if the inter- 
vention of the State in such matters went at all beyond 
the necessity of protecting classes which must always 
be too much weighted to compete with those who, in 
the race for wealth, have advantages which are in a 
measure due to the credit and security afforded by the 



412 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

State itself. It may be hoped that the gradual im- 
provement of the labouring class in all countries, the 
better distribution of profits, so as largely to raise 
wages, and the general improvement of the means of 
living, will enable workmen's unions, becoming ever 
larger and more intelligently managed, to do all that 
the State could do in these respects, and to do it better, 
because with a more elastic application to changing 
necessities. But in the meantime the task of pro- 
tection cannot be deferred, and it indisputably falls 
within the province of government. 

(6) Eelioious Associations. — The grounds of in 
terference of the State with Religion have imdergone 
a conspicuous change, in modern times. The change 
dates from the epoch of the Protestant Reformation ; 
and the new system acquired fresh force in England 
during the Revolutionary period which intervened 
between the accession of Charles I. and that of Wil- 
liam III, On the continent of Europe, the spasm of 
controversy between the Temporal and the Spiritual 
Power has lasted during the whole of the present 
century, having had its origin in the intellectual ante- 
cedents of the first French Revolution. It would seem 
that, so far as rational and scientific principles go, the 
time is approaching when the limits and grounds of 
interference by the State in religious matters will be 
definitely fixed. 

In the meantime there are too many vested in- 
terests at stake, and too many deep-rooted sentiments, 
not to say prejudices, involved, for the application 
of newly established principles to be effected in prac- 
tice, without friction and much recalcitrant opposition. 



GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION. 413 

For some time to come the main task of European 
statesmen in reference to existing religious beliefs and 
organisations will be that of determining how fiir 
recognised principles ought to be applied, so as to 
do practical justice and satisfy reasonable and long- 
formed expectations. 

It can only be by a slow and gradual process, — in 
default of revolution, — that a, really logical relationship 
between Church and State can be attained, and it may 
be that in some States it never will be attained. Ee- 
ligious ties are so ancient, — more ancient, indeed, than 
the fabric of any existing State, — and their bold on the 
deepest elements in man's nature is so strong, and 
tbe capacity for eflFective organisation is so notable a 
characteristic of that Christian Faith which dominates 
in the Western world, tbat it must be very long before 
the purely secular State can place itself in a position of 
sheer antithesis to every form of religious association, 
and deal freely with them as with all other corporate 
communities. 

The principles which, not so long ago, rendered the 
path of the State more clear, are beginning to be held 
with a wavering faith ; and in countries such as France, 
Germany, and Switzerland, where Catholicism, Pro- 
testantism, and what may be called, — for want of a 
better name, — Agnosticism, exist side by side, and often 
in the closest civil intermixture, it is impossible for the 
State to do its duty to all by throwing all its moral 
weight into the scales of any one of the contending 
Faiths. In Ital}^ where the State is pitted against the 
Church in behalf of civilisation itseK, and in England, 
where the absence of the more extreme religious anti- 
pathies and the dominant spirit of religious belief 



414 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

render the side taken formally hj the State a matter 
of comparative political indifference, the problems are, 
again, of a wholly different kind. 

But it is this very variety in the ecclesiastical 
problem in each of the older countries of Europe which 
demonstrates the impossibility of treating it by any 
uniform method of solution. The most that can be 
done is to disentangle the few. broad political pro- 
positions which have been gradually evolved on the 
subject, and then to apply them in practice, as oppor- 
tunity presents itself, it being of course the duty of the 
statesman, here as everywhere, to do what he can from 
time to time to hasten the arrival of such favourable 
opportunities of reform. 

The main proposition on this subject which has 
attained the quality of an axiom, and which underlies 
all the ecclesiastical controversy with the secular 
authority in different States at the present time, is that 
the State is bound (1) to protect each of its individual 
members in the enjoyment of such religious freedom as 
is compatible with the religious freedom of all, and with 
the performance of their secular obligations by all ; and 
(2) to protect both the mass of the population and 
small minorities of it against the superincumbent 
weight and influence of religious organisations, whether 
small or great. 

The first of these tasks is tolerably simple in these 
days; though up to modern times and before the 
doctrine of toleration had been thoroughly preached 
and apprehended, it was the only problem recognised. 
The second task is hard ; mainly because of the in- 
ordinate strength of the opposition organised to resist 
its being carried, and of the impalpable form of the 



GOVERNMENT AND EELIGION. 415 

obstacles wliicli often have to be encountered. It 
seems sometimes as if the statesman were clinging 
with pedantic tenacity to a bare shred of principle, 
when he is really fighting a great battle for justice. 

Thus the form the struggle takes in many Euro- 
pean countries is, that the State claims of the subsistence 
of a civil marriage without Catholic rites ; then the 
exaction from the Catholic schoolmasters of a certain 
minimum of secular training ; the control of the Epis- 
copate so far as appointm,ents and discipline go ; the 
right to inspect conventual communities and to disband 
disloyal confederacies; and the right to put a limit on 
the exemptions enjoyed by the clergy from secular 
burdens such as military service and taxation. 

Now in all these matters it is obvious that religious 
bodies, — and pre-eminently the most highly organised 
body of all, the Church of Eome, — have indefinite 
opportunities of encroachment on the functions of the 
State, and that from the point of view of their own 
existence and aggrandisement they have every induce- 
ment to avail themselves to the utmost of these o];)por- 
tunities. 

Indeed, even in England, where the ecclesiastical 
problem is a comparatively minute one, were the 
Anglican Church deprived of all the advantages which 
constitute it a State establishment ; were the creed of 
the monarch treated as a matter of political indifference ; 
were the Bishops excluded from the House of Lords; 
were the clergy qualified to sit, equally with noncon- 
formist ministers, in the House of Commons ; were the 
Act of Uniformity repealed ; were Convocation substi- 
tuted for Parliament as the only Church Legislature; 
were all special Church Courts abolished except as 



416 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

exercising voluntary and disciplinary jurisdiction ; and 
even were the Churcli largely, or wholly, disendowed ; 
yet, even after all this, the Church might still be the 
Church of the preponderant and most influential classes 
of English society and, by its wealth and organisation, 
exert an influence against which the secular State 
would find it very hard to contend. 

It is of little use for the State to recognise a civil 
marriage if an influential church includes under a 
social ban all those whom its own ministers have not 
joined together. Intolerance may exist without formal 
law to support it, and law maj'- even be practically 
impotent to grapple with it. So far as the English 
problem goes, it is probable that nonconforming in- 
fluence and political strength will continue sufficiently 
united to resist any purely ecclesiastical combination 
which might threaten English liberty; and in any 
scheme of church-disestablishment and disendowment 
there is no doubt that pains would be taken to prevent 
the independent church from becoming an irresponsible 
social despotism. 

In other countries, the problem is complicated by 
the extra-national aspects it has, owing to the foreign 
allegiance of Catholics to the Pope, and the inter- 
national sympathy between Catholics in different coun- 
tries which is roused into active and combined resist- 
ance when any State vindicates decisively tlie civil 
liberty of its subjects against ecclesiastical aggression. 

It will not be questioned, then, that in marking out 
the negative province of State activity, there must be 
included in this province the protection of its citizens 
against ecclesiastical aggressions of all sorts, whether 
this protective power be exerted by provisional but 



PROVINX^E OF GOVERNxMENT. 417 

sharply-defined recognition, as by ' Concordats ' and 
^ Organic Articles ' ; or by incorporation in the struc- 
ture of the secular constitution of some parts of the 
ecclesiastical organisation, for the sake of a more con- 
stant and subtle control, as in England now ; or by 
equally ignoring and equally permitting all forms of 
religious organisation, as in Greece, Ireland, the 
United States, and the British colonies. 

It is more difficult to determine the province of 
Government in respect of matters in which the positive 
welfare and progress of the countrj^ is concerned, and 
not merely the protection of large classes of the popu- 
lation against undue pressure due to the forces generated 
by civilisation and by the social organisation themselves. 
It is in respect of positive good to be sought by govern- 
mental intervention that all the general objections to 
State action specially apply. It is here that the danger 
is presented of paralysing private enterprise, and so of 
arresting beneficial experiments and consequent inven- 
tions ; of indefinite extravagance, waste, and secret 
corruption, without adequate checks ; of extending the 
range of government patronage to a degree which not 
only infects the moral character of the whole public 
service, but reacts most prejudicially on the habits of 
the executive authority at its very centre and tends to 
make all government primarily a machinery for illicit 
self-advancement. 

In view of these dangers, not only must there be a 
constant presumption against the expediency of govern- 
ment occupying itself with tasks which can be done 
by private persons or associations, but there is need 
for the exercise of the most unremittino: vi^rilance in 



418 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

respect of all tlie work of whicli, for one reason or 
another, government assumes tlie direct management. 
Turthermore, the consideration of the special dangers 
to be guarded against affords a means of marking out 
the class of operations to which direct government 
activity can be applied with least risk and most un- 
mixed advantage. 

Such will be those operations the conduct of which 
is simple and uniform and capable of being thoroughly 
and easily understood by the general body of the popu- 
lation. There must not be room for a great variety of 
rules and methods of work at different points. Oppor- 
tunities for the exercise of discretion must be as far as 
possible avoided. If the matter have a financial side, 
the statement of accounts must be able to be mastered 
without special or professional knowledge. If patro- 
nage has to be exercised, the exercise of it should be 
rendered as independent as possible of irresponsible 
choice on the part of the central executive. 

Subject to these tests, the sort of tasks which will 
profit most from being undertaken by Government will 
be those in which uniformity, certainty, punctuality, and 
thecheapness which may come from a monopoly without 
temptation to use it for profit, are such important 
considerations that they outweigh all the general ob- 
jections against government intervention. Whether 
such considerations are in any given state and con- 
dition of society a counterpoise to such objections will 
depend upon the circumstances of the case. Thus in a 
very early primitive society, or in a growing and simply 
organised Colony, the people are so near to the govern- 
ment that the government is little more than a large 
commercial company of which all the population are 



LEVIITS OF THE PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT. 419 

members. In such a condition of things government 
can with advantage do much which, in a more complex 
stage of society, might become the source of indefinite 
corruption and national mdolence. The main objec- 
tion to government intervention in this case is, that 
the habit of relying on government is difficult to 
shake off, and becomes more and more vicious just as 
the difficulty of exchanging it for independent enter- 
prise increases. 

It will be admitted generally in the present day that 
the management of post and telegraph communication, 
and a very considerable control of the railways, satisfies 
the above requirements, as supplying a test of what work 
government should undertake. In speaking of the 
negative reasons for government activity it wa s noticed 
that government has a necessary function to discharge 
in guarding the national soil against absorption by a 
limited part of the population. One remedy for this 
was said to be the assumption of proprietorship of all 
the land of the country by the State itself. But, in 
this case, as in that of the ownership of the railways, if 
this should be resorted to it must be remembered that 
the government cannot itself act as a land-proprietor or 
railway-director (though this is done in many European 
countries) without leading to a transgression of the 
principles just laid down as defining the area of the 
positive functions of government. 

The management of an agricultural estate, and, still 
more, of building land and household property, and only 
in a less degree the direction of a railway, calls for all 
that incessant personal exercise of discretion and of 
capacity for suddenly adjusting unpremeditated means 



420 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

to new ends, which implies, if the work is performed by 
an agent, the highest species of confidence on the part 
of his principal and employer. 

When such delicate and varied tasks are extended 
all over a great country, according as the task of cen- 
tral superintendence comes to be delegated through an 
endless hierarchy of subordinates, the possibility of 
popular control by a representative Assembly is out 
of the question. The Government of the day is itself in 
the hands of the permanent officials, who alone hold in 
their hands the vast skeins of business so ready to be 
tangled and so difficult to pass on from hand to hand. 
If there is incompetency, fraud, or mismanagement, it 
may be only an accident which discovers it, and, as 
often as not, inquiry is checked, through the danger 
that in so intricate a system the wrong persons will 
bear the penalty of an exposed flaw. Thus popular 
criticism is either lethargic or spasmodically unjust, 
and the government becomes a huge organ of popular 
demoralisation and degradation. 

The remedy, of course, is, for the government to 
retain in its own hands no industrial or commercial 
undertaking of the sort indicated, but in all cases to 
make fair and public contracts for their management 
by others. The terms of such contracts can be under- 
stood by all, and the modes of performance, expressing 
themselves chiefly in figures and accounts, can also be 
understood by most. Even in this case, inspectors of 
work and agents empowered to decide on questions of 
repairs, improvements, and prices, or fares, will have 
to be appointed and superintended by government. 
But they will be comparatively few in number and their 
reports can be systematically arranged and published 



FINANCIAL FUNCTIONS OF GOVEKNMENT. 421 

at brief intervals so as to reduce the inevitable clangers 
from State-njanaged labour and capital to the smallest 
amount. 

There is yet to be considered, in connexion with 
the positive functions of government, the practice 
common in most European States of imparting to the 
Executive government a certain measure of control 
over commerce and of giving certain legal privileges to 
a National Bank or Banks. The origin of these privi- 
leges, and perhaps the continuing justification of them, 
is the fact that not only is the government, — as was 
before seen, — the greatest capitalist in the country, 
but, in the case of most of the older States, it is the 
greatest debtor in the country. The result is that its 
financial movements, in making occasional arrangements 
with its creditors, altering its rates of interest, funding 
its debts, increasing them and paying them off and 
transferring them, constitute it, as of necessity, a Bank 
almost in spite of itself. The Government cannot avoid 
discharging many of the most important functions of a 
true Bank, and when a National Bank is constituted by 
law for the purpose of being the agent of Government 
in the investment of its capital, in the payment of in- 
terest (that is, of dividends) to its creditors, and in the 
receipt and retention on deposit of its revenue, this is 
only a mechanical expression of an existing fact, — an 
expression of the greatest convenience to the com- 
mercial public. 

This is so because, through the Government allying 

itself with a Bank, or calling a Bank into being, or 

subsidising a Bank for its own purposes (as was done 

originally with the Bank of England) it enables that 
19 



422 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Bank to employ the government funds for tlie benefit 
of mercantile loans. This may seem a startling pro- 
position, but it is a true one ; and it will be found on 
examination that if the governments of England and 
France withdrew from all concern in the Banks of 
England and of France and established no substitutes, 
the loss to commerce of the amount of floating credit 
available at a moment's notice on trustworthy security 
would be almost incalculably great. Thus the inter- 
ference of governments in banking is a necessary con- 
sequence of taxation, of national debts, and of expen- 
diture on an enormous scale. The National Bank is 
only the material witness to this, which, by a sort of 
innocent legerdemain, is made profitable to all parties, 
and serves simultaneously the commercial public and 
the government. 

It need scarcely be added to the remarks that have 
been made in respect to the management by govern- 
ment of land and of railways that all interference by 
government in commerce, except for the purpose of 
protecting, on principles already laid down, the more 
dependent and helpless classes of societj^, is to be looked 
upon with the greatest suspicion, and circumscribed and 
restricted wherever it has taken root. There is no doubt 
but that government will in the future be wholly ex- 
pelled from this sphere, from which it has, during the 
last century, been everywhere slowly withdrawing. 

Closely akin to the claim of governments to interfere 
in the supervision and control of commerce, is that to 
interfere in and regulate Navigation. Up to a recent 
date, when the domination of Free Trade doctrines finally 
abolished all the national privileges of a commercial 
kind formerly monopolised by the shipping of each 



GOVERNMENT AND NAVIGATION. 423 

State, the governmental control of navigation was 
merely a necessary means of enforcing the policy of 
the State. At tlie present time the only grounds for 
exerting such a control are : — first, the importance of 
distinguishing national and foreign shipping in time 
of war; secondly, the necessity of carrying into effect 
customs laws, laws of quarantine, and harbour regula- 
tions ; and thirdly, the protection of the dependent class 
of sailors against the effect of avaricious contracts of a 
fraudulent nature, against ill-treatment, and against 
hazards of the sea brought about by the carelessness or 
reckless loading of vessels by ship-owners. 

The intervention of the State for all these purposes 
not only seems to be justified by common political con- 
siderations, but, being of a purely preventive and cor- 
rective kind, is little exposed to the abuses to which the 
direct management by the government of large concerns 
has been seen to be so obviously open. Nor is it plain 
that intervention of this limited sort weakens, in any 
considerable, or at least in a proportionate, degree, the 
independent energy of private ship-owners. There is, 
no doubt, the recurrent difiiculty that superintendence 
of a large mercantile marine implies a vast amount 
of inspection and the employment of a large body of 
inspectors of different grades. Against this really 
valid objection can be opposed only the compensating 
advantages which are sought ; and the evils which this 
objection recognises are much reduced when they are 
not ignored, and when the amplest opportunity is 
afforded for popular censure and for the detection 
and exemplary punishment of illicit transactions in the 
name of the government. 



424 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

Of late years tlie duties of the State in respect of 
National Education have been much debated, and, in 
almost all countries where the question has arisen, the 
practical decision has been in favour of recognising the 
duty of the State to enforce on all its subjects the 
acquisition of the elements of primary education. The 
arguments which have finally prevailed have been that 
the children born into a State have a moral right to 
claim, first of their parents and, if they fail, of the 
State, to be put into a condition to understand the duties 
obligatory npon them and to earn an independent liveli- 
hood ; and that the State has a corresponding moral 
duty,^ — as it has, furthermore, a cogent interest, — to 
provide the opportunity for the training thus claimed, 
and to vindicate the claim of the child, if need be, 
against the parents themselves. 

These broad arguments have, no doubt, been per- 
plexed in their application by the peculiar traditions 
or prejudices existing in different countries in reference 
to the necessity of including some kind of religious in- 
struction within the range of primary education imposed 
by the State, and to the degree and kinds of compulsory 
force which may be legitimately exerted in order to 
render it eff'ectual and universal. If once it is admitted 
that a certain minimum of education is the right of 
every child, and the duty of the State, the remaining 
questions as to where the minimuyn is' to be fixed, of 
what it ought to be composed, and how the duty of the 
State in this matter ought to be performed in the special 
circumstances of each particular country, are questions 
of political Art and not of political Science. 



PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT. 425 

There yet remains a class of topics in respect of 
which the functions of the State are more indubitable 
than any of those hitherto alluded to. These topics 
are such as directly concern the subsistence of the 
State itself, and its maintenance against disorder 
within and assaults or injustice from without. They 
are (1) the management of the Police and the adminis- 
tration of Justice ; (2) the management of the Army 
and Navy ; (3) the collection of the Taxes. 

As to all these matters the objections to govern- 
mental management of large and complex concerns 
apply in the fullest measure, and it has been seen, 
while discussing the subject of ' Local Government/ 
that one of the advantages of decentralising govern- 
ment is that the means of inspection, and the direct re- 
sponsibility of the administrative agents, are increased. 
Such local delegacy can be applied with marked 
advantage to the Police, to important departments of 
the administration of Justice, to some supplementary 
departments of the national Army, and even to the 
collection of Taxes for purposes of purely local ex- 
penditure. 

But there will still fall on the shoulders of the 
central government a sufficient burden of direct ad- 
ministration, in respect of all these matters, to open out 
the floodgates of every form of abuse and corruption 
in default of incessant public vigilance. This vigilance, 
however, must be exerted in a way to co-operate with 
truly conscientious statesmen, and not so as to hamper 
endlessly, and thereby to weaken dangerously, all their 
best efforts. A strong government is one which can 
always rely on adequate and faithful popular support, 



426 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

even when it is exerting to the full its most centmlised 
powers; and the best government is weakened inde- 
finitely when every exertion of power is popularly mis- 
taken for aggressive violence, and coaiprehensive activity 
within its appropriate limits for a treasonaMe conspiracy 
against popular rights. 



427 



CHAPTER XL 

REVOLUTIONS IN STATES. 

There is something anomalous in the attempt to in- 
corporate a treatment of the Science of Revolution into 
the study of the Science of Politics. It might seem, in 
the first place, inconsistent with the very notion of 
Revolution that it should be classed and organised, by 
anticipation, as an ordinary or necessary phenomenon ; 
and the anarchical elements on which it rests might be 
held to exclude the possibility of its being made the 
subject of precise scientific statement. In the second 
place it might seem that no State or government could 
subsist if it contemplated Revolution in advance, and 
that the attempt to do so by including it in the provi- 
sions of the constitution deprives it of its essential 
character as an incalculable, and not a calculable and 
regular, phase of political existence. 

Nevertheless there is no doubt that it is round the 
theory of the right or duty of revolution, and of the 
rights and duties which spring from it, that the most 
celebrated controversies on theoretical politics have 
been waged. It seems to have been during the Parlia- 
mentary struggle with Charles I. that the first notion 
of an abstract constitution was conceived and worked 
out by Harrington and his political associates. It was 
the revolutionary resistance to the claims asserted by 



428 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the Stuart dynasty to have a ^ right divine to govern 
wrong ' that called forth the imperishable arguments of 
Hobbes and Locke on the basis of all government and 
on the Social Contract. 

It was the revolt of the American colonies which 
called forth the political propositions broadly formu- 
lated in the Declaration of Independence and elaborated 
in argumentative detail by the authors of the ' Fede- 
ralist.' It was the French Revolution which in 1791 
originated the Declaration of the Eights of Man, and 
which suggested Burke's ' Eeflections ' and the replies 
of Thomas Paine and Sir James Mackintosh. 

It is, again, the American Secession War which has, 
in our own day, established on deeper bases than ever 
the doctrines of political right and duty in a constitu- 
tionally-governed State, and has given a new spring to 
theoretical speculations on the true nature of the con- 
stitution of the United States, as distinguished from 
that of a federal government. The recent revolu- 
tionary movements in Poland, Eussia, the provinces of 
the Ottoman empire, Germany, and Ireland have kept 
alive political controversy on the profoundest topics of 
constitutional existence, but without, as yet, obtaining 
any complete or satisfactory solution, even in theory, of 
the problems raised. 

This indisputable connexion of revolutionary facts 
with the history of political speculation in modern 
times ceii^ainly suggests that the study of some of 
the most notable revolutionary agitations of the past 
two or three centuries may be expected to throw light 
upon the class of permanent truths with which scien- 
tific politics alone deals. It may be that revolution 
itself will, as constitutional government grows, become 



HISTORY OF EEVOLUTIONS. 429 

an anaclironism. There is reason to suppose it will, 
because the characteristic of every good constitution 
is to provide, by anticipation, for its own gradual 
amendment, and to supersede the necessity for violent 
and cataclysmic demonstrations of the popular will. 

But, while these happier times are still being ex- 
pected, it may be profitable to turn to account the chief 
revolutionary epochs which have been of late both the 
occasions and the tests of political controversy, and to 
endeavour to remove from their history the spurious 
coating in which party spirit and popular ignorance have 
enveloped it. 

It is not necessary to go further back than the 
seventeenth century of the Christian era, and it would 
be unprofitable to dwell on any revolutions which have 
arisen in States having no shadow of constitutional 
government. The revolutions of Greece and Eome, 
and of early monarchical France and England have, no 
doubt, their important lessons. But the more recent 
revolutions in constitutionally-governed States, or, — as 
with. France at the close of last century^ — in States 
infected by a revolutionary spirit manifested in other 
States with which they had political relations, convey 
all these lessons, and others besides. 

While, then, the history of the world's political 
revolutions in their entirety would be full of profit as a 
contribution to political science, the field it would 
cover would be too large to form only a part of another 
treatise. It is sufficient for purposes of scientific 
exactness to concentrate the attention on those revo- 
lutions which have a distinct bearing on the charac- 
teristic aspects of modern political society in some of 
the most advanced and advancing States. 



430 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Sucli revolutions are that of England, beginning- 
with the Parliamentary Wars against Charles I. and 
ending with the establishment on the throne of the 
Orange, and afterwards of the Hanoverian, dynasty ; 
that of the American thirteen colonies, concluded by 
the recognition of their independence by Great Britain ; 
that of Prance, beginning in 1789 and concluded (to 
fix a purely arbitrary date) by the battle of Waterloo 
in 1815; the American Secession war from 1861 to 
1865 ; and the revolutionary movements at different 
epochs in the present century in Poland, Hungary, 
Russia, Germany, the Ottoman empire, and, it is 
almost necessary to add, Ireland. 

By way of preface, it is necessary to notice that 
revolution is of three kinds, each of which is usually 
strongly marked, so as to render it clearly distinguish- 
able from either of the others. 

A revolution may be, first, essentially anarchical, 
that is, it may proceed from a general undisciplined 
temper in the revolting population, and be directed to 
the upsetting of the existing government, or government 
and constitution combined, without those who conduct 
it having any views as to substitutes for one or the 
other, and being in fact other than indiflFerent as to the 
political prospect of the future. This form of revolution 
is likely to be chiefly manifested in a primitive stage of 
civilisation, when the advantages of orderly and settled 
government have not been long experienced, and when 
these advantages, indeed, only exist in a moderate 
degree, from the political weakness of the government 
and from the imperfectlj^ organised state of society. 

A second form of revolution is when no thought is 
entertained of reverting to anarchy, but the object of 



DIFFERENT KINDS OF REVOLUTIONS. 431 

those who take part in it is, primarily, either to change 
the personality of the government or to resist some 
legislative or executive measure. This measure may 
presumedly be in accordance with the constitution, in 
which case the movement is directed to bring about a 
new interpretation of constitutional rules, or a modi- 
fication of the constitution, or a better use of dis- 
cretionary powers on the part of the authorities 
complained of : or the measure complained of may be 
contrary to the rules or spirit of the constitution, in 
which case the object of the movement is to re-enforce 
the constitution and establish it on surer foundations. 

A third form of revolution is where the object, 
conscious or unconscious, is to change the constitution 
itself from its foundations and to introduce a new form 
of government. 

The confusion of these different forms under the 
general name of Eevolution has been rife with much 
political misapprehension, having, at times, serious 
results. 

A caution has, however, to be interposed, to guard 
against the supposition that any revolution can be 
readily classed under one or other of these heads with- 
out looking below the surface, or even, in certain 
cases, reverting to recent historical conditions. Thus 
it seldom happens that the leaders of a revolutionary 
movement and the great mass of their followers are 
exactly of the same mind, or that they continue long to 
be of the same mind, if they were so momentarily ; or 
that the facts resulting from the movement itself do 
not undergo such a change as to produce divisions of 
parties and to alter the entire complexion and object 
of the revolution. 



432 TKE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

In fact^ this is one of the most calamitous iucidents 
of a revolutionary period, — that, the usual landmarks 
being removed, all the anarchical and undisciplined 
dispositions latent in the community have free course, 
and assume a positive energy which is injurious to the 
cause of wise political reconstruction. There ensues 
for a time a condition of flux and chronic instability 
highly favourable to fanatical parties, to usurpers, to 
pretenders to power of all sorts. 

Every historical revolution, both secular and reli- 
gious, has witnessed phenomena of this sort, — from the 
incessant changes of leadership which took place during 
the protracted revolution during the last hundred years 
of the Eoman Eepublic, to the Anabaptists of Miinster, 
the two Napoleonic regimes and the ' Commune ' in 
Paris, and the more extreme modern Separationists in 
Ireland. 

It may happen, indeed, that this very tendency of 
revolution to generate within itself a temporary organi- 
sation, having its roots, not in the broad political 
instincts and exigencies of the country, but in some 
superficial and partial sentiment, may act as a preser- 
vative against prolonged anarchy. It is possible, too, 
that the man, or party, or section of opinion, which for 
the moment comes to the top may represent some 
valuable truth or long despised cause, which is recalled 
to life with lasting benefit to the State. He or it 
teaches his or its lesson, leaves his or its impress, and 
passes away. 

There is, too, a really close connexion between the 
grounds of revolution above distinguished which pre- 
vents them from being always separable in theory or in 
practice. Thus in cases where a reigning dynasty 



CAUSES OF EEVOLUTIONS. 433 

represents particular principles of government, a 
change in the dynasty may necessarily involve a change 
in the constitution. In autocratically governed States 
this is likely to be especially true, and the truth of it is 
the only conceivable apology for political assassination. 

Furthermore, the change of a dynasty as a con- 
sequence of a revolution, whether democratical or aris- 
tocratical, is itself not v^ithout necessary effects on the 
constitution. There is always a doubt as to the 
theoretical foundation of an existing form of govern- 
ment, and this doubt is most prevalent and harassing 
when a dynasty has long occupied a throne on no other 
pretext except that of hereditary descent. 

In one sense this is the strongest foundation of 
all, — so long as popular criticism is not aroused, — 
because it carries all the pretensions due to a mysterious 
origin in the far past, and to a traditional reverence 
almost amounting to superstition. But when once 
popular criticism is fairly aroused, and, owing to some 
conflict, the person of the Sovereign is treated with 
contumely, and the dynasty displaced in fact, a new 
condition of the popular consciousness supervenes. 
Government goes on without interruption, and it is 
found that its basis is not in a person, or in a family, or 
in an historical accident, but in the will of the people, 
or, it may be, in the will of some narrow and auto- 
cratic section of the people, who represent themselves, 
and are really felt to be, the vicegerents of the people. 

Thus, in the course of changing the personality of 
the government, a constitutional change has also been 
effected. It is likely enough (as has happened over 
and over again) that the new dynasty, sovereign, or 
ruler, introduced to take the place of the old, will be 



434 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

formally bound to recognise tlie new source of power, 
and to repudiate the principles of his predecessor. 
This new obligation and act of repudiation becomes 
henceforth a constitutional bulwark, and is the starting 
point from which future revolutions take their rise. 

In the same way there is a genuine anarchical ele- 
ment present in all revolutions, inasmuch as they can 
only be distinguished from mere local seditions by pro- 
ceeding from a broadly diffused popular determination ; 
and this implies the co-operation of a vast number of 
persons who can appreciate (like the Kentish men in 
Jack Cade's time) the misgovemment from which they 
suffer, but are ignorant of the necessary conditions of 
government to which they owe the security of their 
lives and property and the maintenance of their poli- 
tical existence. 

It is the main function and duty of revolutionary 
leaders to avail themselves of their inordinate influence 
to check the extravagance and fanaticism which comes 
from this ignorance, and to do their utmost to teach 
their followers to distinguish the evils they are entitled 
to rid themselves of, from the equable and inevitable 
pressure which belongs to the very existence even of 
the best and best-administered Government. 

The fact that rational efforts after change open the 
door for irrational impulses in the direction of mere 
disorder is aggravated by the presence, in every com- 
munity, of a certain class, not numerically important 
in quiet times, who have a direct personal interest in 
relaxing the bonds of society, and in weakening the 
action of the Executive Authority. 

In the continental countries of Europe, where the 
boundary lines between State and State are usually of 



REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 435 

a very artificial kind, prolonged anarchy in one State 
results in its collecting within its territory all the out- 
lawed scum of surrounding States. Life and property 
become unsafe, the police become impotent, and the 
magistracy overawed ; the taxes cannot be collected, and 
the army is recruited by foreign adventurers ; while, all 
the time, the attainment of the real political object 
which is at the root of the revolutionary movement is 
impeded, rather than advanced, by these wholly extra- 
neous incidents. The worst is, that the revolutionary 
reformers, however good their cause, have to suffer 
from the obloquy properly attaching to such needless 
disruption of order. This was especially the case 
during the time of the Paris Commune in 1870, and 
has occurred repeatedly in the revolutionary movements 
in the European provinces of the Ottoman empire. 

In the light of these observations, bearing on the 
distinctions between the leading causes of revolution 
and on the modes in which these causes often co-operate 
or simultaneously present themselves, it will be 
expedient to refer to the chief characteristics of the 
series of revolutions already enumerated, which, in the 
aggregate, may be said to have prepared the way for 
the existing constitutions and mutual relationships of 
the chief modern civilised States. 

In English politics, the revolution period, — extend- 
ing from the breaking out of the Parliamentary War 
against Charles I. to the accession of William III., — 
has supplied the main principles which have been 
applied by statesmen and political authors to the dis- 
cussion of the subject of revolution generally. It was 
Thomas Paine who pointed out that this limitation of 



436 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

view was the main ground of tlie erroneous reasoning 
which underlies Edmund Burke's otherwise masrnificent 
' Eeflections on the French Eevolution.' 

It would seem, in much of the reasoning contained 
in these Eeiflections, that the author conceived no other 
way of effecting a revolution, and no other just cause of 
revolution, than those which could be illustrated by 
the history of what has been called the Whig Eevolu- 
tion, of 1688. In fact, Burke does not seem to have 
connected in his mind and in his arguments the whole 
of the revolutionary events, extending over more than 
half a century, of which the final expulsion of the 
Stuarts in the person of James II., and the establish- 
ment of a new dynasty by Act of Parliament was 
merely the climax. If he had looked at all these 
events in their sequence and connexion, he would have 
seen that the lessons they taught were wholly peculiar 
to England at that time, and might have little appli- 
cation either to a-nother country or to another a.ge. 

From the first distinct outcry against the high- 
handed proceedings of Charles I. — expressed in the 
refusal of ' Ship-money ' and in the ' Grand Remon- 
strance ' — to the trial of the seven bishops, the 
foundation of the English Revolution was a conception, 
right or wrong, of an English oonstitution to which the 
King and the Parliament were equally subject. 

It was, indeed, no new thing to make such appeal 
to laws and customs which the monarch could not 
violate with immunity. The reiterated enforcement of 
Magna Charta and similar constitutional formularies of 
ancient repute ; the repeated use of the impeachment 
of Ministers of the Crown for acts done in the monarch's 
name ; the dethronement by a quasi-judicial process, 



REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 437 

however rougli and irregular, of Edward II. and 
Eicliard 11. ; tlie successful resistance to the aggressions 
on Parliament attempted by Queen Elizabeth, and the 
disallowance of torture as applied by the Privy Council 
for the purpose of obtaining evidence ; and, finally, the 
stem check imposed on James I. in the matter of 
monopolies ; all these were but anticipations of the 
practical belief in the existence of a constitution to 
the requirements of which King and Parliament, as 
well as the people, were all equally amenable. 

It is true that, as is the case in all revolutions, 
soon after the purely constitutional position had been 
taken up by the Parliament, and public order was sus- 
pended in consequence of the King's firm stand against 
concession, religious differences played an important 
part both in widening the feud and in determining the 
form of the temporary reconstruction. The Puritan 
movement, whether in the form of mere non-conformity 
or in the more organised character which it assumed in 
the hands of the Presbyterians and the Independents, 
co-operated with the purely constitutional movement, 
but did not merge it in itself. 

No doubt, in the early days of the Commonwealth, 
a rage for positive legislation set in, which was rather 
an anticipation, by some two or three centuries, of the 
progress of the constitution than a denial or contra- 
diction of it. But a passion for positive legislation is 
a result of such a disturbance of a familiar national 
routine as brings people face to face with long-seated 
but real evils and gives them a novel experience of 
the a<2t of law-making. During the past half century 
in England the spirit of legislation has been almost 
rampant, and the Acts of Parliament probably far 



438 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

exceed in volume and mass all previous legislation from 
the time of the Conquest. Yet the constitution has 
been maintained on the same general lines, and has 
always been regarded, by the most opposed political 
parties, with almost superstitious reverence. 

Of course it is true that the establishment of the 
Protectorate involved a ver}^ distinct alteration in the 
form of government; but the founders of it were, 
probably, incapable of estimating how great was the 
constitutional change. For them the true English 
constitution was not so much to be found in the 
hereditary monarchy, and in a House of Lords, as in the 
general principle of a popular representative assembly ; 
in broad intelligible principles concerning the free 
exercise of religious worship, and free speech ; and in 
exemption from illegal taxation, from arbitrary im- 
prisonment, from central executive usurpation, and 
from unjust State trials. 

These principles were patently essential ; and were 
guaranteed by ancient traditions ; though one Sovereign 
and another, and, most of all, the Stuarts, had in 
practice outraged them all. So long as they were 
vindicated, the constitution, or all that was vital and 
precious in it, was maintained inviolate. If they were 
impaired, there was nothing worth maintaining. 

The result of the Catholic proclivities of James TI., 
following upon the moral laxity of the reign of Charles 
II., was to recombine the secular and religious revolu- 
tionaries. The only points round which they could 
momentarily meet were the elementaiy constitutional 
principles which were independent of any particular 
dynasty, as they had already nearly proved themselves 
to be (and in truth are) even independent of the insti- 



BUEKE AND THE FKENCH REVOLUTION. 439 

tution of an hereditary monarchy and a House of 
Lords. 

The Whigs who, in a somewhat cold and dis- 
passionate manner, conducted the final negotiations 
which resulted in the abdication of James II., were in 
fact intermediaries between those who were earnest on 
both sides, whether as ardent protestants or as clear- 
sighted republicans. As a dominant faction, they 
cared littls for spiritual religion, and had the reverse 
of any class interest in abolishing social and hereditary 
distinctions. Their natural object was to rehabilitate 
the constitution with the help of more ardent reformers 
than themselves, whilst retaining the direction of affairs 
in their own hands. Thus the revolution ended in 
reinstating the essential principles of the constitution 
as finally embodied in the Bill of Eights, and in per- 
petuating the outward forms of monarchical and 
aristocratic institutions as a testimony to the claims 
of formal continuity. 

It will be convenient for purposes of contrast, though 
at the cost of chronological order, to oppose to the 
consideration of the English Eevolution of the seven- 
teenth century the consideration of the French revolu- 
tion at the close of the eighteenth century. Burke 
committed a double error in first supposing that the 
French in 1789 had anything deserving the name of a 
constitution to appeal to, as against the depravation of 
monarchical institutions in the person of Louis XVL ; 
and, secondly, in assuming that all political disorders 
can be cured by orderly processes recognised and im- 
plicitly provided for within the limits of the constitution 
itself. 



440 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

It is true that tlie latent political discontent flamed 
out into revolution before the third Estate had had 
an opportunity of making its constitutional voice fairly 
heard. But an Assembly which has not been sum- 
moned for some three centuries can only by force of a 
strained antiquarian superstition be reckoned as part 
of the existing constitution. 

The act of summoning it was a desperate measure 
devised to stave off national bankruptcy with some 
show of political regularity. That it was alien to the 
spirit of the despotic and aristocratic rule which, by 
long prescription, in fact governed France, was instantly 
proved when it tried to set itself to work to express the 
real voice of the people without allowing itself to be 
swamped by the privileged classes already in possession 
of the Government. 

Thus, while the old feudal constitution, which re- 
cognised the political and representative rights of the 
freemen, had long been dead, the joint aristocratic and 
monarchical constitution, which had gradually super- 
seded it, was in the act of perishing by its own corrup- 
tions. It was found, by the experience of a day, that 
what was dead could not be made alive again, and what 
was dying could not be saved. There were too many 
distinct and reasonable causes for local disaffection 
throughout the country for a moment's delay to be 
brooked. 

In the case of the English revolution the House 
of Commons had not only been continuously sitting, 
even in the reigns of the most despotic and over- 
reaching monarchs, but it had, amidst all obstacles, 
retained and enlarged its right to control taxation and 
to check the action of the executive. The usurj)ations 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 441 

of the Plantagenet and Tudor kings were conducted, 
not by rendering the House obsolete, but by domineer- 
ing over it, or by corrupting it, or by unfairly influencing 
some of its prominent leaders. Thus the way was kept 
clear for a reformation of government; and neither 
the king himself nor the ingenious crown-lawyers and 
judges, whose courteous services he usually succeeded in 
purchasing, could deny the broad claims of the House 
and of its members to independence. The true consti- 
tution can thus scarcely even be said to have been in 
suspense, — not even when Henry VIII. succeeded in 
procuring Act after Act of Parliament for his own 
personal and family aims, or when Charles I. appeared 
on the floor of the House and ordered the seizure of 
the Five Members. The constitution might be out- 
raged, but it could not be ignored. 

In Prance, on the other hand, a constitution could 
not be established by galvanising a mummy. New 
political sentiments had to be created among the 
people, new machinery had to be constructed, and new 
relationships between the people and the government 
had to be established. And this all had to be done 
while the crumbling edifice of the discredited constitu- 
tion had not yet quite disappeared ; while the mass of 
the population were hungry, excited, and ignorant ; and 
while surroundinof nations were becomingr fearful and 
aggressive, from the belief that the revolutionary doc- 
trines prevalent in Prance would shortly extend to 
themselves. It is obvious that no analogy whatever 
exists between this condition of things in Prance and 
the condition of things in England a century earlier. 

A natural question is suggested as to whether the 



442 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

revolution in the American colonies, — wliich only pre- 
ceded by a few years the first French revolution, — in- 
clined rather to the English type in the seventeenth or 
to the French type at the close of the eighteenth century. 
Everything points to the fact that the English and not 
the French type was before the eyes, and in the hearts, 
of the leaders of the American War of Independence ; 
and that in the conduct of their revolution they were 
more English than the English themselves. There is 
less of religious fanaticism, less of the effect of mere 
pergonal influences, less disregard for the consequences 
of violent political change visible in the American 
revolution than in the English. In every step of the 
American revolution, there is a conspicuous appeal to 
unassailable principles (though often wrongly formulated 
and dangerously wide), and the recognition of existing 
ties, obligations, and conventional relations, which be- 
token calmness of head and deliberateness of intention. 
The American people rebelled, — but it was in order (as 
they took it) to repel novel and tyrannical invasions 
on their long-established and often-chartered rights 
of Local Government and self- taxation, not to obtain a 
licentious independence^ and still less to enjoy the 
supposed sweets of anarchy, or even of a newly invented 
form of government. 

An instructive contrast to all three revolutions is 
afforded by the history of the Secession war. The best 
arguments alleged by the Southern slave-holders for 
seceding from the Union were, first, that the right of 
dissolving the Union by withdrawing from it was an 
inherent right of every State, and had never been ex- 
pressly withdrawn by the constitution ; and, secondly, 



AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 443 

that in every free government, each member of the 
State is entitled, as by an indefeasible rights to with- 
draw from connexion with it in case he regards the 
conduct of the government or the nature of the consti- 
tution as incompatible with his own physical and moral 
existence. 

Mr. Calhoun had formulated the first of these 
positions as early as December 27, 1837. In his 
speech upon the Eights of States {' Works/ vol. iii. 155), 
he said : 

" The only remedy is in the States Rights doctrines ; and, if 
" those who profess them in slaveholding States do not rally 
^' to them as their political creed, and organise as a party 
" against the fanatics in order to put them down, the South 
'' aud West will be compelled to take the remedy into their 
" own hands. They will then stand justified in the sight of 
" God and man, and what in that event will follow, no mortal 
" can anticipate." 

So far as relates to the federal constitution of the 
Union which Mr. Calhoun here treats of, no general 
question on the abstract right and nature of revolution 
was involved. And events have decided on an inter- 
pretation of the constitution adverse to Mr. Calhoun's 
views. 

But, as to the larger proposition included in Mr. 
Calhoun's statement that a mere discontent (however 
profound) with the conduct of the government in power, 
with the working of the constitution, or with the con- 
stitution itself, can of itself justify revolution, either as 
a matter of political expediency or as one of morality, 
to maintain the affirmative is to go far beyond the most} 
extreme revolutionary doctrines which have ever pre- 
vailed in France or now prevail anywhere in Europe. 



444 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

No reasonable person attempts to justify or recom- 
mend a revolution except as a last and desperate 
resource. It must be the only conceivable remedy ; a 
probably successful remedy ; and a remedy for an evil 
so great as to be incompatible with moral and political 
existence deserving of the name. 

To cite the language of one who was a trenchant 
reformer of political abuses and who wrote before the 
Secession War : 

'^ The evils must have become intolerable before the resist- 
" ance is to be attempted ; the parties whose rights are invaded 
*' must first exhaust every peaceful and orderly and lawful 
*' means of redress. An insurrection is only to be justified 
" by a necessity which leaves no alternative ; and the proba- 
" bility of success is to be weighed in order that a hopeless 
" attempt may not involve the community in distress and 
'* confusion.'* 

Every one of the tests was decisively against the case 
of the Southern States. It is only necessary to read the 
Declaration put forth by the Southern Congress at 
Eichmond, and to compare it with the liberal pro- 
vision for representation of the whole population of 
all the States in the House of Representatives, and of 
each State equally in the Senate, and with the equal 
share of all in the election of the President, in order to 
see how wide is the difference between the position of 
the Southern Confederacy and their forefathers who 
founded the American Union. The Declaration says 
that 

*' we fell back upon the right for which the Colonies main- 
*' tained the War of the Revolution and which our heroic 
" forefathers asserted to be clear and inalienable.'* 



DECLAKATION OF THE SOUTHEEN STATES. 445 

It further says : 

" Compelled by a long series of oppressive and tyrannical 
** acts, culminating at last in the selection of a President and 
" Vice-President by a party confessedly sectional, and hostile 
" to the Sonth and her institutions, these States withdrew 
" from the former Union and formed a new Confederate 
" alliance, as an independent government based on the proper 
" relations of capital and labour." 

The truth is that accordiug as popular institutions 
grow, revolution should become more and more needless 
and impossible. Representative government, of a broad 
and really effective kind, combined with ample facilities 
for its own amendment, and for any amount of consti- 
tutional reconstruction, must secure the adoption of 
every change which is really an object of determined, 
persistent, and general desire. Movements for the 
carrying out of partial ends, for the abrogation of 
laws injuriously affecting special classes, and objections 
to the policy of government, felt (it may be) throughout 
large sections of the community, will always continue 
to manifest themselves ; and they are signs of health 
rather than of disease. The public press, the right of 
public meeting and of free association, will test the 
sincerity of agitators, and accustom them to patient 
and deliberate, as well as mutually tolerant, habits of 
action. Sedition will always be possible, though more 
and more rare. 

The only cases in which these principles and pro- 
spects seem out of place is where a distant — or even a 
near, but alien — dependency (such as Ireland, or it 
might be the Channel Islands) is governed by a popular 
legislature sitting at a distance. In such a case, no 
doubt, a widespread movement of discontent may partake 
20 



446 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

rather of the character of revolution than of sedition, 
and deserve proportionate respect, not to say precautions. 
Whether a particular revolution satisfies the tests just 
laid down, is a question of practical politics and does not 
belong to political science. The current revolutionary 
movements in Eussia, Poland, the European provinces 
of the Ottoman empire, and Germany all belong to the 
type of the first Trench revolution, the object being 
rather to found a new constitution than to re-establish 
a lost or weakened one. 



447 



CHAPTER XII. 

EIGHT AND WRONG IN POLITICS. 

There is no serious tliinker at the present day who, if 
pointedly questioned, would deny the applicability of 
the terms Rights Wrong, Ditty^ Conscience^ Morality, and 
Immorality to the conduct of States and governments as 
well as to that of individual men and women. It is 
true, indeed, that, — if these terms are used loosely and 
thoughtlessly enough in pronouncing on the conduct of 
private persons, where the problem, if any, is tolerably 
simple in its elements, and where most of the conditions 
of it are capable of being ascertained and reduced to a 
certainty, — in the larger political field the inquiry is 
highly complicated, and large classes of the most 
essential facts are wholly out of the reach of the 
judicial investigator. 

Nevertheless it is manifest that in all quarters in 
which public criticism resides — whether in the news- 
paper press, in the more laboured and deliberate 
magazine, on the election hustings, or in the political 
text-book — the Tightness or wrongness of the acts of 
legislatures or administrators is brought to the bar of 
a strict public opinion with quite as much decision and 
explicitness as is the expediency or prudence of the 
same acts. This use of language is at all events a 
testimony to the existence of a widely diffused con- 



448 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

sciousness that States and governments have no im- 
maculate conception. 

The fact is, indeed, so obvious, when thus stated, 
that it is almost forgotten how wholly absent from the 
ante-Christian theory and practice of politics in all 
Western communities was the notion of a purely moral 
standard of action, and that perhaps Christianity has 
triumphed almost as signally in moralising secular 
politics as in spiritualising individual and domestic life. 

The readers of Coleridge's lay-sermon on ' The Bible 
the Statesman's Manual,' as well as of the late Pro- 
fessor Maurice's ' Prophets and Kings of Old Testa- 
ment History,' will recall the lesson, nowhere more 
impressively taught than in the writings of these 
authors, that the Bible has had an almost incalculable 
influence in swaying political judgments, that it was 
j)rovidentially designed to have that influence, and that 
political judgments for all time can never escape from 
an obligation to the immutable principles pre-eminently, 
if not exclusively, revealed to the Jewish Church. 

In spite of these incontestable facts, there is a 
difference of some importance and magnitude between 
the ethical standard and even the ethical motive, when 
it is applied to vast communities iconsisting of an 
indefinite and indiscriminate number of individual 
persons organised for the ends implied in the complex 
notion conveyed by the term State ^ and when it is 
applied to the individual life of private persons. 

It is obvious, for instance, that in a despotically 
governed community, where the king or emperor is 
above the law, and makes the law as he wills, and 
executes it when and how he pleases, the rightness and 
wrongness of acts of State are in fact synonymous with 



MORALITY AND THE STATE. 449 

the riglitness and wrongness of tlie autocrat's acts ; and 
the critical problem is reduced to the same mode of de- 
termination as in ordinary judgments on the acts of 
private men. 

But where the government is of a more complex 
kind, or perhaps of an extremely complex kind — de- 
pending, say, in the case of each of its acts, on a 
concert of chambers, of representatives, and of various 
executive authorities, there being much discussion and 
finally broad divisions of opinion — the unity of conduct 
seems to be so disturbed or confused as almost to ex- 
clude the idea of moral responsibility as residing 
anywhere in the nation at large. 

Considering that the tendency of modern times is 
certainly in the direction of an increase of complication 
in the machinery of government, partly on account of 
an access of intricacy in the concerns to be provided 
for, partly on account of a higher susceptibility to the 
claims of a distributive justice, it would be a most grave 
conclusion to arrive at, that moral judgments were to 
be paralysed just at the moment when they need to be 
quickened into more active life. 

Fortunately, experience is the other way ; and there 
is no doubt that the very same causes which have made 
modern political constitutions intricate in their struc- 
ture, and perhaps somewhat slow and cumbrous in their 
action, have vitalised the moral energy of the critical 
public everywhere, and are compelling governments to 
comply with a purely moral standard of action to an 
extent which even a hundred years ago, and a fortiori^ 
in pagan times, would have seemed to the moralist a 
mere gorgeous dream. 



450 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

M. Eenaii^ lias pointed out, with a force which he 
might have borrowed from some of the most orthodox 
modern Christian apologists, that the interval of the 
Eoman Empire was in fact an interpolation of a cosmo- 
politan and denationalised society between the intensely 
patriotic worlds of the Eoman and Greek republics and 
those of the modern European States. 

But M. Eenan and Christian apologists place very 
different interpretations on the phenomenon they com- 
bine to illustrate. Whether the interval was a merely 
human cause of the growth of Christianity, or was a 
divine and necessary preparation for it, there is no 
question but that, as the new Christian States arose, an 
ethical element was found to be indissolubly bound up 
with them, for which no place was found in republican 
Rome or even in philosophical Greece. 

Mr. Ward, in his ' History of the Law of Nations,' 
has attributed much direct influence on the growth of 
international morality first to the Councils of the Church 
and then to the action of the Papacy. But,— apart from 
their direct operation on such matters as the observance 
of treaties, the treatment of prisoners of war, the re- 
striction of private wars, the observance of the ^ truce 
of God,' and the censure of the private lives of rulers, — 
there was a far greater though long-hidden change 
manifesting itself in the nature of the standard to 
which a final public appeal was made. 

The Christians from the orthodox south met the 
Ariaii Christians of the north, and amidst all the cling- 
ing barbarism, the crass inconsistencies, the individual 
outrages manifest everywhere, the name of God and 
the supreme obligation of a moral law occupy a place 

^ Hibbert Lectures. London, 1880. 



ANCIENT POLITICAL MORALITY. 451 

in the thoughts of the soklier, the colonist, the serf, 
the barbarian chief, and the popuhir assembly, which 
was whoUj new in the g^rowing world. 

The story from that time to this is indeed a 
checkered one; and during it the seed of the moral life 
has been hidden, sometimes for generations together, in 
the cell of the monk ; or wasted in the untimely visions 
and utterances of the fanatical enthusiast ; or religious 
wars have seemed to drown in blood the precious in- 
heritance for which they were waged ; or violent per- 
secutions have simulated the portents of heathendom : 
till at last there daivns some hope that the nations of 
the West are to have free course, with all the gains 
and with all the help of finely adjusted moral criticism 
for which they have so long struggled and waited. 

Of course in these remarks it is not intended to de- 
preciate the aspirations and criticisms of such of the 
nobler spirits of old as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and 
Plutarch; nor, still less — to deny that motives of the 
most purely ethical kind were all along determining, 
however unconsciously, the action of statesmen and the 
lives of patriot citizens. It is only alleged that the 
conscious application of a moral test in the region of 
politics, not by a few of the more highly trained minds, 
but by tlie general and intuitive apprehensions of the 
multitude at large, is a growth and attainment coeval 
with the appearance of what may be characteristically 
called Christian States. 

The application of an ethical standard and motive 
to politics sheds an instructive light on the curious 
fortunes of modern Utilitarianism, and, when properly 
considered, is capable of helping forward the solution 



452 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

of the proLlem to which the existence of that theory 
owes its rise. 

Modern utilitarianism reached its fullest, or only 
logical, development in the teaching of Jeremy Bentham. 
It has indeed had a history since his time to which the 
late Mr. John Stuart Mill has largely contributed. But 
in the countless modifications and explanations which 
have attended it, it has lost what at its first birth and 
mature growth was its chief recommendation — the 
excellence of simplicity and consistency. 

In the last chapter of his treatise on ' Early Institu- 
tions,' Sir Henry Sumner Maine has drawn attention 
to the fact that Jeremy Bentham was a legislator more 
than anything beside ; and his taste and genius as a 
legislator determined his habits of thought on all 
subjects whatever. But, at best, legislation is, on one 
side of it, a rough practical remedy for the evils of the 
world. Each person legislated for counts as one and no 
more. And between twcr alternative remedial processes, 
that generally has to be preferred which benefits more 
persons before another which benefits fewer. 

Bentham's celebrated treatise on ' Morals and Legis- 
lation' is nothing more than a logical expansion of 
this principle and its application to the whole field of 
human life. The legislator transforms himself into the 
moralist, and he brings with him into the new universe 
he has invaded no other implements and mechanism 
than the coarse materials which fully sufficed him for 
his previous work. 

It needed but a superficial criticism to show that, 
whereas such an idea as that of happiness (or rather the 
restriction of pain) may have an intelligible meaning 
for the political reformer, it is far too impalpable and 



UTILITARIANISM. 453 

indefinite to be of the slightest service in indicating the 
aim and standard of all moral acts. The measurement, 
again, of this happiness, and the calculation of the 
number of persons who may be affected by any specific 
scheme devised for imparting it, again imply materialistic 
conceptions of number, quantity, and weight, which, in 
connexion with the thoughts and feelings, as well as 
with the singular phenomenon of conscience (with which 
morality is alone concerned), are singularly irrelevant 
and inappropriate. 

Nevertheless it has been well pointed out that the 
opponents of utilitarianism have afforded a handle to 
their adversaries by ignoring, or appearing to ignore, 
the truly materialistic and calculable elements that 
often must enter into moral acts. There are many 
cases in which the moral agent who is scrupulously de- 
sirous of conforming to the dictates of conscience must 
balance the claims of diverse alternative duties by re- 
ference to the number of persons whose interests may 
be affected, according as one course or the other is 
adopted, or by the degree, quality, or quantity, of the 
interest which is at stake. 

The late Professor Grote, brother of the historian 
of Greece, in his exhaustive ' Examination of the Utili- 
tarian Philosophy,' was among the first opponents of that 
philosophy who recognised the real utilitarian element, 
inseparable from any complete moral theory; and he 
did more to close the controversy for ever than any 
other writer in the same field. 

It is undoubtedly in the world of politics that 
whatever utilitarian element really belongs to a science 
of abstract morality will be pre-eminently found. Mr. 
John Austin, indeed, was so impressed with this fact. 



454 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

and so desirous of reconcilincy the teacliino: lie derived 
from Benthain with the promptings of a reverential 
view of Divine Providence, that he based his utilitarian 
structure on a theocratic foundation. God loves all His 
creatures, argues Mr. Austin, and designfi for them the 
utmost happiness possible in their mundane circum- 
stances ; in Tact, the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number of all members of the sentient creation. By an 
inversion of this thought, Mr. Austin holds himself en- 
titled to conclude that if the happiness can be weighed, 
and the number of persons affected counted, the arith- 
metical elements would be provided for ascertaining 
in any given case the will of God and the path of- duty. 

Unfortunately there are, in the ethical regions, pro- 
ducts which are lens ponderable even than pleasure, and 
as heathenism certainly failed to regenerate the world 
by the law of competition, it is still being seen whether 
Christianity has done or can do more for it by the law 
of sacrifice. 

As an instance of the curious transmutations which 
moral ideas and terms properly undergo when transferred 
from the life of individual men to the existence of the 
State — or rather from the lives of men in a non-political, 
to the lives of men in a political, aspect — there will at 
once recur to the memory the persistent problems as to 
whether and under what conditions patriotism, ambition, 
national rivalries or antipathies, are virtues or vices. 

It would be said at once that it depends on the cir- 
cumstances ; that what is a virtue up to a certain point 
becomes a vice if practised beyond that point ; and that 
the fact that the State is the object of action cannot 
really alter moral estimates from what they would be 
if smaller and more insignificant corporations were 



PKIVATE AND PUBLIC MOEALITY. 455 

alone concerned. And yet this is not exactly true. It 
is felt at once that for a man to devote the whole of his 
energies towards advancing: the material interests or 
even the safety of a narrow circle with which he is 
identified — be it his family, his clan, his club, his 
vilhige, or his political party— scarcely differs, as a 
matter for moral evaluation, from an entire devotion 
of a man's life to what is in the narrowest sense him- 
self. JSTot, indeed, that the moralist will forget that 
some of the hardest and most perplexing duties and 
those least well remunerated, being inward rather 
than outward, may be said, however fallaciously, to be 
performed solely in reference to a man's self. 

In this sense the constantly-extending groups of 
his fellow- creatures with whom he comes into relation 
during his earthly life represent only an ever-enlarging 
and enriched self. He may be called upon at different 
epochs to consecrate himself wholly to one or other of 
these groups, or he may run in advance of his duty — 
and so really lag behind it — by preferring at the wrong 
time and place the claims of one group over those of 
another. These claims cannot be measured nor ad- 
justed by any rude appreciation of the numbers of 
persons affected, or of direct effects of conduct. He 
may need a lifetime of cultivated moral sagacity to 
determine rightly and justly, and no bare rules or 
recorded experience of others can do more than supply 
him with principles or stimulate him by example. 

But when the transition is made from all the 
smaller societies to the State, the moral atmosphere 
seems to have undergone a transformation and old 
things to have become new. Duties which were 
relative become absolute. Actions which were, or 



456 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

seemed, partly virtuous and partly vicious are exposed 
in their true colours to the light of day. The whole 
judgments of mankind seem to have become concen- 
trated and enlightened, and the experience of the race 
to be laid nnder tribute for the purpose of clearing 
moral action and propagating throughout society 
straightforward and perspicuous popular sentiments. 
Cari sunt parentes, cari liberie propinquiy familiares ; sed 
omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est ; pro 
qua quis bonus dubitet oppetere mortem si ei sit pro- 
futurus. 

In such sentiments as these are gathered up a 
world-history of philosophy, which has been not only 
filtered into popular truisms, but transfused into the 
most inexpugnable of emotions and aspirations. It is 
believed to be right to make sacrifices for the State 
which no other cause — scarcely even the interest of a 
man's self and his home — could justify. 

It is asked why a State or nation differs, beyond 
possible comparison, in the dignity and authority of 
the claims which it makes on the individual human 
component of it, from what is made in the case of 
any other or smaller organisation, or even by a wider 
organisation, such as an empire (that is a levelling 
assemblage of divers nations or States) ; it can only be 
answered that the State occupies, in the constitution 
of the world, a position sui generis^ and to which there 
is nothing which presents any exact resemblance or 
analogy. 

So far as our knowledge extends, it is in the life 
of the State, and only there, that human life, in all its 
ramifications, can obtain the nourishment it needs for 
its appropriate expansion and development. This is 



GROWTH OF PUBLIC MORALITY. 457 

equally true, indeed, of the family, and we believe it to 
be true of some still luglier and less materially con- 
stituted society which, amidst all the limitless inter- 
pretations which have been placed upon the name, still 
retains for Christians the profoundest significance — that 
is, the Church. 

Each of these organisations has an essential con- 
tribution to make to the perfection of human society 
and to the perfection of individual life in that society. 
Each lays claim to the devout allegiance, within 
proper limits, of the persons who compose it ; and each, 
on the other hand, owes to those persons the main- 
tenance of its own peculiar character and the faithful 
discharge of its tutelary duties. 

It is thus that the largest-minded heathen philo- 
sophers, such as Aristotle and Cicero, discerned that in 
a life of public activity on behalf of the State something 
more was concerned than the accomplishment of nar- 
row personal aspirations. In the same way, even with 
all the refinements of modern ethical criticism, it is 
intuitively felt that the self-seeking of such men as 
Henry VIII. of England, of Frederick the Great of 
Prussia, and even of Napoleon Bonaparte, has to be 
submitted to a very different,— though perhaps not 
more indulgent, — ordeal from that which is applicable 
to ordinary men acting in a more circumscribed area. 

The root of this feeling is, no doubt, a true con- 
sciousness that the mere contact with State affairs, and 
the lively apprehension it carries with it of the innu- 
merable and lasting interests which the coiiduct of a 
single man affects, have of themselves a sobering in- 
fluence, which, by tending to dwarf into insignificance 
all mere personal cravings, forces even the most narrow 



458 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

minds into a certain largeness of action which suggests 
a dominant sense of accountability to something other 
and better than a temporary and vacillating public 
opinion. 

The faults of this moral inquisition, as applied in 
the pagan world, were due in a large degree to the con- 
stitution of the pre-Christian States, in which a slave 
population vastly exceeded in numbers the population 
of enfranchised citizens. The result was that even the 
most scrutinising philosophers had no types presented 
to their eyes or their memories of phases of society in 
which common civic virtues and, still more, prominent 
civic excellences were demanded of more than a limited 
fraction of all the persons in the State. Thus atten- 
tion was fixed far more on the signal examples either 
of virtue or vice in individual citizens of note than 
on that general standard of public self-renunciation 
to which even the humblest and most indigent 
citizen would, according to a modern standard, be 
expected to attain. 

Another cause of this altered spirit of criticism is 
to be found in what is sometimes regarded as the 
greater gravity of modern life as contrasted with 
ancient, but which is really the expression in the world 
of politics of the ideas of individual conscience, of 
duty, of right, and of wrong, to which the training of 
eighteen Christian centuries has, with all its terrible 
drawbacks, given such a magnificent extension. 

In the older world duties were distinct, separate, 
manifold, and, as it were, dislocated. There was no 
tie to bind them together, and none to explain the 
connexion which the duties of one person, or of one 
class of persons, in a community had with duties of a 



POLITICAL EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 459 

different kind elsewhere. Thus the duties of a man to 
his country were artificially contrasted with duties to 
his family, to himself, or to mankind at large, and any 
impetus that might be given to one order of these 
duties simply terminated there, without diffusing any 
fresh light or heat beyond itself. 

The essence of Christian civilisation and of morality, 
on the other hand, is to impart to all duties a mutual 
connexion, and further to link every group of duties 
to a comprehensive and unique spirit of obligation and 
self-devotion, in the harmonious oneness of which the 
commonest uses are strengthened and quickened by 
alliance with all the rest. Hence, when once it was 
recognised in modern consciousness that a man owed 
a duty to his country, and could commit a sin by 
neglecting this duty, the duty in question was instantly 
enforced by all the sacred and persuasive sanctions by 
which the whole of the reformed society was kept 
together. 

It will be well at this point to remark upon a few 
of the concrete manifestations of this change of moral 
attitude. Instances are supplied by the familiar moral 
formulse now universally adopted as defining the duties 
of individual citizens in respect of (1) frauds on the 
revenue, (2) corruption at elections, (3) revolution. 

(1) The prevention of the class of offences to which 
belong smuggling and false returns to taxing assess- 
ments, might be expected to be easier in modern com- 
munities, into the government of which the idea of 
representation enters so largely, than in States in 
which the governors and the governed were for almost 
all purposes polar opposites. 



4G0 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

Yet the extension of the range of modern govern- 
ment from that of the city to the aggregate of cities 
and landed territory composing the modern State-unit, 
has of itself, apart from the mere growth of moral 
ideas, introduced a new class of difficulties in the 
application of common morality to the relations of a 
taxpayer and his government. The smaller and more 
concentrated the State system, the more nearly does 
it approach, in the popular apprehension, to a purely 
communistic society, in which the end of the organisa- 
tion is understood by everybody concerned ; in which 
the supports deriva^ble from a clear and uniform public 
opinion are of the strongest; and in which the loss 
occasioned by individual defaulters is most obviously 
connected with the undue burdening of all other persons 
in the community. 

In the present day the financial machinery of 
States, — complicated and magnified as it is by enor- 
mous public debts, — has attained to a portentous size 
and breadth, which in ether ages would have seemed 
scarcely compatible wdth the continued existence of a 
State. But the productive resources and the extension 
of commerce by land and sea could also never have 
been foreseen. The general effect, however, is that 
such taxation as there is is spread over almost innu- 
merable classes and orders of persons, none of whom 
are exempt, none (theoretically) unduly burdened, and 
no one subjected to exactly the same amount of pressure 
as another. 

Thus, where legal contrivances for detecting evasions 
fail, as little help as possible is provided b}^ a rigorous 
and keen-sighted tribunal of public opinion. Every one 
knows that, if he were the only defaulter, the loss to 



FRAUDS ON THE REVENUE. 461 

the State and the access of burden to other persons 
woukl be incalcukibly small. Every one also, when 
arguing with himself in his own cause, is too prone to 
adopt a sophistical suggestion that a self-governing 
community leaves to private citizens a greater licence 
to do as they like — that is, not to be governed at 
all, and consequently to be governed at their neigh- 
bours' expense— than is granted in less popularly- 
governed communities. 

Hence, — wliat with the privacy which the very 
extent of the taxing operations involves, the unequal 
incidence of the taxes, and the impotence of executive 
organisations for buoying up the popular conscience, — 
a sentiment too easily grows up, and is rapidly diffused, 
which is inimical to stern convictions of the treachery 
to the State and the real moral turpitude and shameless 
cowardice which is involved in evading the discharge of 
money debts to the State. 

Such a sentiment is in fact one of the deepest 
political heresy, or rather amounts to political infidelity. 
It is one thing openly to refuse to pay a particular tax 
in the spirit, say, of John Hampden, or even, as some 
persons have done even in England of late, to take the 
"first step in revolution by refusing to pay all taxes, on 
the ground of dissatisfaction with the representative 
system, or with the conduct of the government. It is 
quite another thing to continue openly to draw all the 
advantages of civic concert and to breathe the air of a 
full national life, and yet at the same time to turn to 
private account the necessarily infirm efforts of the 
State to grapple with its perplexities, and to batten 
in secret over prey — however small-^^ filched from the 
common treasury. 



462 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

There is growing up on every side a far higher 
morality than heretofore, with respect to the relations 
of a private citizen to the State on its jBnancial sid^ ; 
and if scandalously lax doctrines still prevail in many 
quarters, this is mainly owing to the greater rate at 
which modern States have grown in population, in 
territorial extent, and in financial liability, than in an 
ethical intelligence adequate to meet the new demands 
upon it. 

(2) Some of the same reasoning and the same his- 
torical consideration applies to the case of bribery and 
electoral corruption. The case here is no doubt a some- 
what more complex one, inasmuch as the possibilities 
of wrong-doing in the matter of giving a vote by no 
means stop at the point of merely refusing a pecuniary 
payment for it, but travel through the whole scale of 
unworthy motives up to those which are just short of 
an ideal and scrupulous conscientiousness. 

In some countries — as in England, for instance — 
the very structure of the State has almost inevitably 
connected a base personal interest with the discharge 
of the highest representative functions. Under the 
nomination-borough system, which prevailed before the 
English Eeform Act of 1832, it was almost inevitable 
that the right to send, and therefore to choose, a 
member of Parliament was, in the popular conscious- 
ness, an essential ingredient in the aggregate of pro- 
perty rights vested in the local potentate whose will 
determined the election. So soon as these boroughs 
were abolished, it might well have seemed that the 
new constituencies were the ^universal heirs,^ for 
electoral purposes, of the aristocracy whose place they 
took. 



ELECTORAL FBAUD AND CORRUPTION, 4G3 

This dangerous and confusing notion is even still 
supported by the anomalous circumstance that Peers of 
Parliament are constitutionally and legally entitled to 
make monetary contracts with railwny companies in 
respect of their vote for or against a proposed railway- 
scheme before the House of Lords. They are not held 
to be representatives of the public, and on behalf of the 
interests of themselves and their families they may do 
what they choose. Thus, just after the passing of the 
Eeform Act of 1832, it is probable that not only did 
corruption reach its highest point in England, but 
the popular conscience in respect of it was at its 
weakest. 

The great extension, however, of the suffrage has 
been gradually working its own cure, and the House of 
Commons has only reflected, however tardily, the 
promptings of the national conscience, by improving 
the machinery for trying imputations of bribery by a 
judicial process closely resembling that of a criminal 
trial, conducted on the spot by one of the judges of the 
High Court of Judicature, as well a.s by instituting the 
ballot. 

As to this last institution, indeed, some con- 
troversy has taken place among critical moralists as to 
its direct and indirect bearing on the public sense of 
honour and of political responsibility. It has been 
said that voting is discharging a trust, and that every 
trust ought to be discharged openly and courageously. 
To shelter a voter from the consequence of his vote is 
said to be merely nursing in him habits of political 
timidity, not to say cowardice. 

This reasoning, however, is certainly opposed to the 
universal experience of the action of the ballot both in 



464 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the United States, the British colonies, and in Great 
Britain itself during the years in which it has already 
been in o]peration. The relief which the ballot secures 
from immediate and surrounding pressure, or rather 
intrusiveness, of all sorts, and the quiet and decent 
order thereby secured for the performance of the most 
solemn and deliberate of all political functions, constitute 
an almost priceless boon. The ballot need not of itself 
involve any concealment of a voter's political character, 
intentions^ or acts. All it does is to prevent the forcible 
exposure of a political act to the eyes of persons who 
have no claim whatever to be acquainted with it, and 
still less to control it. 

If the only sort of corruption which had to be 
denounced were that which takes a directly pecuniary 
form, there would be a fair prospect of its shortly 
becoming an anachronism. Experience, however, has 
been showing of late years that one of the main diffi- 
culties, which popular government, — especially when 
extended over a wide area, — has to contend with, is due 
to corruption of a less palpable kind, and one which, 
on the face of it, less easily falls within the reach of 
moral obloquy. 

The individual voter in the smaller constituencies 
or the more remote districts of a country, cannot but 
have all sorts of private interests of himself, his family, 
his township, or even his religious sect to serve by 
returning one candidate to the Legislature rather than 
another. It is difficult to say that it is in all cases 
base to give a preponderant weight to one or other of 
these interests as contrasted with the w^hole claims of 
the State, which are, i">erhaps, very imperfectly known, 
and still less duly estimated at their true value. 



MORAL BASIS OF AN ELECTORAL SYSTEM. 465 

To give just the right degree of regard to the 
narrower interest, — which ought not to be wholly 
neglected, — and to the wider interest, — which ought to 
be of supreme concern, — requires a finely-cultured con- 
scientiousness, which can only be the growth of long 
and arduous national training, and indeed of individual 
education. It is none the less proper, however, to 
denounce in the strongest terms the more flagrant 
kinds of preferential regard for private over public, and 
for local over national objects in the selection of mem- 
bers of the legislature. 

It does not seem possible in such countries as 
England, with its antiquated traditions the other way, 
and the United States, with its federal system and 
its enormous area, to dispense with the prominence of 
the local and territorial element in representation. 
Efforts, indeed, have been made (as was seen in a 
former chapter), by some such machinery as Mr. Hare's 
method of proportional representation, to add the 
minorities together over a considerable district, and so, 
among other advantages, to reduce the openings for 
corruption. But the primary basis of the representative 
system, especially in widely scattered territories, will 
probably always be local; and therefore the best 
securities against corruption must be looked for in 
a quickened sensibility to the true relations of near 
and distant demands, and to a penetrating conscien- 
tiousness in preferring, on proper occasions, the general 
to the more particular interest. 

(3) The moral duties of citizens in respect to Revo- 
lution have at all times opened out an unbounded field 
of debate. The opinions of most persons are coloured 



466 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

by reference to some recent experience either of their 
own, or their own nation, or their own times ; and in 
proportion to the gravity of the subject is the heat of 
the passion with which the discussion of it is usually 
approached. In Europe, indeed, it happens that, for 
the last two hundred years, the breaking np of the 
pretty uniformly distributed pressure of the feudal 
system has been attended by a series of revolutions of 
an almost uniformly and obviously beneficial character 
in each of the European states. 

The experience of America has been of a more 
ambiguous kind. Enough, however, has happened to 
range, on the whole, the friends of political progress 
with the advocates of the extreme rights of revolu- 
tionists, and in their eyes to erect the right of revo- 
lution into almost as dignified a position as was once 
occupied by the ' Divine right of Kings.' 

And yet if the modern politician could find time to 
ponder at leisure on the history of the last hundred 
and fifty years of the Roman republic, he would learn 
that there are states of society in which there may 
prevail a facility of creating a revolution — now by the 
help of the mob, now by that of a professional soldiery, 
— which may constitute at once the most tempting 
seduction to an unconscientious citizen, and become 
the main peril to the stability of any government at 
all. Bad and reckless as was the Roman government 
at the beginning of the time alluded to, and flagrant 
as were the breaches in the constitution habitually 
made by the constitutional authorities themselves, still 
the first violent occupation of Rome by Sulla wdth an 
armed force, — for the purpose, indeed, of maintaining 
or restoring formal order, — marks the moment from 



REVOLUTION AND PATRIOTISM. 467 

which the true constitutional reparation of Rome 
became for ever impossible. 

Probably the actual revolution perpetrated by Sulla 
was rendered unavoidable by preceding constitutional 
events, including the innovations of the Gracchi, and 
the choice was only between the permanent rule of 
successful soldiers and the intermittent despotism of 
street mobs led by capitalists. 

Such memories are wholesome as checks on any 
predisposition to glorify a revolutionary spirit as syno- 
nymous with patriotism. When popular government is 
completely established, it rests with the people them- 
selves—ex hypothesi — to control the action of the 
executive, to determine the policy to be pursued by 
the legislature, and, if necessary, to recast entirely the 
formal mechanism which is interposed between the 
popular will and its interpretation in action — that is, 
to reform the constitution. It may not be able to do 
any of these things in a day, and from personal and 
accidental causes the impediments to the full exertion 
of the popular force may be greater at one time than 
at another. 

But after a sufficient interval has elapsed for bring- 
ing the public mind to bear on a subject requiring 
attention or a defect requiring amendment, and after 
full discussion has taken place, and after all the 
legitimate influences of all sorts have sufficiently played 
upon and counteracted each other, there does arrive a 
moment at which it may be truly said that people have 
come to a definite determination and know their own 
mind. 

It is the part of a good citizen, who is possessed by 
even the most frenzied eagerness for achieving some 



468 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

particular political improvement, to attain his object by 
a legitimate use of the multiform means legitimately at 
his disposal. He will do his utmost to bring the world 
— that is, the ultimately effective portion of the whole 
body- politic — round to his views ; he will resort, it may 
be, to all the instrumentality of the public platform, 
the public press, and of what is implied in the right of 
association and combination. It is not till every one 
of these resources has been tried and has failed that 
the question can so much as present itself as to the 
comparative duties of a citizen to acquiesce, for the 
sake of order, in a hopelessly bad state of things, and 
that of encountering the certainty of present disorder, 
with the possibility of bringing about a catastrophe, 
involving good and evil alike, in pursuit of a good not 
otherwise, if at all, to be attained. 

The plea for revolution in a popularly-constituted 
State must rest on the allegation of there being some 
accidental obstruction to the free action of the popular 
will. This obstruction may be owing to the prepon- 
derant and maliciously-exercised influence of some 
individual person or group of persons, who, by the 
existing forms of the constitution, happen to be placed 
out of the reach of popular control ; or it may be due 
to the unexpected failure of some check or balance- 
wheel which time and circumstances have rendered 
futile; or, again, it may be due to a deliberate con- 
spiracy, in some quarter or other, by which the forms of 
the constitution are complied with, while its spirit is 
perverted or treacherously invaded. 

Even in such contingencies as these, recent ex- 
amples, — of which France at the close of Marshal 
MacMahon's Presidency was a signal sj)ecimen, — have 



REVOLUTION IN PREE STATES. 469 

shown that there may be an outlet for the reassertion 
of the true popuhir will short of either mob or military 
violence. Anj^way, it is a crime of the deepest dye 
for any man or assemblnge of men to contemplate 
revolution, so long as remedies may still presumably be 
found either within the normal range of constitutional 
action, or by means of popular amendments of the 
constitution, conducted after a regular and orderly 
fashion. 

Not, indeed, that severe and scrupulous limits can be 
assigned to the excitement and even ebullient fury 
which are likely to accompany the disturbance of things 
long settled, and the stir of strong passions heated by 
fervent appeals to them, and by a consciousness of 
corporate sympathy. But the fire and fume of a 
healthy political life and growth are distinguishable 
at every point from the wanton abuse of the free 
mechanism of popular government for the sake of pre- 
cipitating results, which, either are achieved only in 
appearance, or, if achieved in reality, do, by en- 
throning the principle of premature, capricious, and 
needless revolution, bring with them infinitely more 
loss than gain. 

If, as has been seen by the above brief illustrations, 
the conduct of the individual citizen is properly exposed 
to a moral criticism, on the ground of its conforming 
or not conforming to a purely moral standard, it is still 
more true that the State itself, in its relation tow^ards 
its citizens and towards other States, is properly sub- 
jected to a like censure. The acts of the State are 
determined by its executive authority for the time 
being, by its legislature, and, in a popularly governed 
21 



470 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

State, by the people. It is in tlie interaction of these 
three elements that the form and working of the 
constitntion consist; and though, for one purpose or 
another, one of these elements may have to take the 
initiative, the action of the constitution, whatever its 
form, must tend to bring them all into harmonious co- 
operation sooner or later, and so to make each depart- 
ment of the State, and the aggregate people above all, 
responsible for what is wrong and fairly to be accredited 
with what is right. 

It is in this way that when the conscience of the 
nation is spoken of, and the sins of a nation are 
denounced, this is by no merely loose analogy to the 
moral conformation of the individual human being. 
Man is gifted with such an inherently social consti- 
tution, that numbers of persons admit of being so 
organised as to take up into themselves, as it were, 
even the most spiritual elements which characterise 
each one of the component atoms. The perfection to 
which this sort of moral incarnation reaches will depend^ 
in a State, on the constitution of that State, coupled 
with the facilities which exist for amending, controlling^ 
or continuously inspiring that constitution. 

In whose soever hands the supreme political autho- 
rity of the State at a given moment rests, that authority 
has cast upon it, as its first duty, the completion of the 
State itself, by the development of all the moral possi- 
bilities latent in the people, and by, to this end, facili- 
tating the acquisition of that organised force which 
enables the real proclivities and intuitions of the people 
most easily to express themselves, and most effectually 
to be converted into action. Certain practical corol- 
laries follow from these positions. 



MOEAL ASPECTS OF SLAVERY. 471 

In the first place, the existence of slavery in a 
State is a certain sign either that the State has its 
conscience as yet only very imperfectly developed, or 
else that it acts habitually and persistently in defiance 
of the promptings of conscience. Wherever true slavery 
is found, there the cardinal political sin, as Coleridge 
pointedly described it, is committed of turning sl person 
into a thing. The denial of human rights thereby im- 
plied, even if confined to ever so small a fraction of the 
community, and e\en if accidentally attended by every 
kind of modification and even humane compensation, 
is an outrage which can never be extenuated. 

The history, indeed, not only of the most en- 
lightened Pagan nations, but of modern nations other- 
wise Christian, has shown the terrible inertness of the 
ruling portion of the community when brought face to 
face with classes of persons who, either by past con- 
quests or by long-inherited traditions, are found in a 
condition which is very favourable to the present well- 
being, or at least to the material enrichment, of all 
other persons but themselves. 

Experience has shown that the temptations to 
moral self-delusion, and even to religious casuistry, for 
the purpose of forging pretexts for an institution 
incompatible with every idea of a true humanity, 
including all the free moral and spiritual elements 
comprised in the term, are facile and ever at hand to 
an extent which will probably dismay our posterity 
even to a greater extent than it does our more hardened 
selves. 

What is true of slavery is true in an only less con- 
spicuous degree of every denial of full political rights 
which is based on any other necessity than those con- 



472 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

tained in the disabling infirmities of age, mental 
infirmity, and penal disfranchisement. If the State 
has, in truth, all the essential elements of a moral and 
spiritual structure, this structure can only be composed 
out of the contributive humanity of every individual 
atom of the population, and not of only a portion of 
those atoms, and still less of any capriciously or in- 
vidiouslj^-preferred portion of those atoms. 

No doubt the course of historical development has 
been that of extending the suffrage downwards so as to 
embrace wider and wider classes, less obviously marked 
out at first as concerning themselves with political 
action, rather than of starting with the widest suff'rage 
and limiting it afterwards. It is no exception to this 
that the first English Reform xlct of Henry VI.'s reign, 
by which the county suffrage was restricted to forty- 
shilling householders, was a disfranchising act. This 
was a special enactment for the purpose of procuring 
order in the county court at election time, and for 
substituting a definite for an indefinite constituency. 

The notion of universal suffrage, or of manhood 
suffrage, never prevailed at any time in England, in 
w^hich country, as in all other feudal States, the origi- 
nal basis of the suffrage was that of doing suit and 
service at the county court as a vassal of the king. 
The borough suffrage, again, had a distinct histor}^ of 
its own. 

The modern extension of the suffrage is usually 
treated not as a moral requirement, but as a matter of 
mere political expediency, or, at the utmost, of compul- 
sory necessity. When once, however, it is apprehended 
that, for any classes in a community in full possession of 
political rights, — and therefore theoretically, as well as 



MOEAL ASPECTS OF ELECTOEAL EXTENSION. 473 

to a great extent practically, in command of tlie State, — 
to refuse a concession of like rights to any other classes 
of persons not demonstrably incompetent, constitutes in 
the State an offence parallel to that of fraudulent mis- 
appropriation in the individual person, it is probable 
that political measures for a reconstruction of the 
franchise will be considered in a somewhat less exclu- 
sive and selfish spirit than is common. Corresponding 
to this duty on the part of the State is the duty of the 
citizen to exercise his right to vote, and to exercise it 
righteously. 

Assuming that the State has reached a constitutional 
extension which affords a sufficient opening for the full 
exertion of the national voice, and for the effective 
manifestation of the national will, the first concern of 
those who are for the time being the legislative and 
administrative organs of the State will be that of 
asserting at every point the truly moral constitution 
of the State itself as a supreme instrument for the 
evolution of all the fairest constituents of individual 
character and life. 

Among the institutions which even in Pagan socie- 
ties have been regarded, and are regarded, as of cardinal 
importance for the sustenance both of individual exist- 
ence and of the State itself, is that of family life and 
of monogamic marriage, on the rigorous maintenance 
of which true family life can alone ultimately depend. 
In every wide national society very great latitude may 
properly be allowed for private associations of all kinds, 
whether for mei^e social purposes or for the higher ends 
of economic, industrial, scientific, religious, or political 
co-operation. But the character and circumstances of 



474 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

the initial family groups,— on the vitality, strength, 
cohesiveness, and modes of reciprocal interaction of 
which the healthiness of the whole body-politic turns, — 
are of so momentous an importance that they cannot be 
left to individual choice or to the vagaries of scientific 
experiment, without the gravest dereliction of duty 
somewhere, and — if such a state of things is allowed to 
continue — everywhere. 

In the older feudal monarchies of Europe, pene- 
trated as they are by the crystallised spirit and formal 
institutions of Christendom, monogamic marriage is so 
unassailably established, and contains so many con- 
servative guarantees, that the main diflSculty in some 
of these countries is to make just provision for un- 
avoidable divorces, and to provide equitable arrange- 
ments for the unhampered marriage of persons be- 
longing to different religious societies. 

The phenomenon in the United States of a large, 
well-populated, industrious, fertile, and otherwise highly 
organised district — always aspiring to be a State — being 
professedly built up on a foundation of polygamy, is a 
portent which can only fail to astonish and alarm the 
home, as well as the foreign, critic because of that long 
familiarity with an evil which is at once its most 
dangerous consequence and its sorest punishment. 

Repeated indications in Presidents' Messages, in 
desultory acts of Congress, and in intermittent sallies 
of the central executive government, have always had 
at least the effect of making an overt confession to the 
world that the wrong is one the flagrancy of which is 
nowhere denied, and to which the government is en- 
titled and morally bound to apply a stringent and 
effective remedy. 



THE STATE AND PUBLIC LOTTERIES. 475 

A problem of a peculiarly modern kind has been 
presented by the practice, long habitual in European 
Slates, of utilising by Lotteries the speculative tendencies 
of the mass of mankind, in order to enrich the State 
without apparent pressure in the way of taxation. This 
practice is now being abandoned in those States in 
which a liberal constitution has brought the conscience 
of the people adequately to bear, and it will at no 
distant time probably go the way of all other dese- 
crating stains on the ideal dignity of the State. 

It does not require any refined ethical analysis to 
demonstrate the viciousness of the practice. Not only 
are the vices of men rendered tributary to the State, 
and therefore inevitably regarded with political favour 
— an objection which so far equally applies to raising a 
large part of the revenue from the consumption of 
spirituous liquors ; but, — over and above this operation 
which it has in common with excise duties on spirits 
fixed at a point which shall carefully fail of being 
prohibitory, — State lotteries stimulate to the utmost 
the vices on which they repose, extend the temptations 
to them over vast classes of persons of all ages and 
positions to whom they would otherwise be strange, and, 
by the mere force of associated interest and a sort of 
riotous conspiracy in ill-doing, affect to build the stern 
fortunes of an immortal State on the most sandy of 
all foundations — public excitement for a flagitious 
cause. 

What is here said of State lotteries properly so 
called — that is, the practice of raising revenue directly 
by the institution of all the mechanism of general 
contribution, a few great prizes, a vast number of 
blanks, a widely extended system of advertisement. 



476 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

and all the glamour capable of being imparted to it by 
a superficial decorum in the elaboration of details, all 
under the direct executive administration of ofovern- 
ment, — applies with little less force to all public patron- 
age of gaming-tables, to fixed institutions for the direct 
encouragement of gambling, and to the permission, 
whether legislative or executive, of even occasional 
lotteries which are on a scale extensive and pretentious 
enough to entrap and delude those innocent classes 
of society which, from their previous experience, are 
least likely to be able to save themselves from a wholly 
novel infection. 

Nothing, indeed, short of a determined recognition 
of the illegality of all public gaming-tables or insti- 
tutions, permanent or temporary, which rest on a gam- 
bling basis, can vindicate the honour of the State in this 
matter. And it will not be sufficient for the State to 
make laws, however severe, unless it practically secures 
that they are consistently and effectually enforced. 

There are other modes of raising a revenue or of 
temporarily increasing the national resources, which, 
however supported at the moment by the popular voice, 
and however successfully they may evade the criticism 
of even the more sceptical members of society, are none 
the less tainted with immorality, and, to the extent 
that they prevail, are fraught with danger to the 
stability of the nation. 

To this class of expedients belong all remedies for 
current evils which really partake of the nature of 
confiscation of property, of repudiation of debts, and — 
what usually involves both the one and the other — of 
depreciation of the coinage. This is by no means 
saying that revolutionary crises may not arise in which 



FINANCIAL IMMORALITY OF STATES. 477 

measures of these kinds, wliich usually must be cha- 
racterised as suicidal, may not be morally justifiable, 
as courses to be preferred to an instant plunge into 
anarchy. If these desperate adventures were only 
reserved for such epochs, they would scarcely come 
within the ken of the general moralist. 

It needs, however, only to glance around at the 
actual practice of some States, otherwise enjoying a 
reputation for justice and public honesty, and at the 
language occasionally used in the legislative assemblies, 
and even at diplomatic correspondence with other 
States, to see that the current line drawn between 
justice and injustice, truth and falsehood, right and 
wrong, in the case of such financial topics as those 
adverted to, is far too often shamefully flickering and 
indistinct. 

There is indeed one special abuse in this direction 
which is a peculiar growth of modern times, and is a 
product of the very increase of stability and of moral 
reputation to which, on the whole, modern States, as 
contrasted with ancient ones, have attained. This is 
the disposition to meet financial emergencies, deficits, 
or pressing and accidental claims, by creating national 
debts, involving indefinite charges on the remotest 
posterity. 

The general principle is, indeed, publicly avowed, 
that a moral rule does apply to determine the cases in 
which it is, and which it is not, legitimate to burden 
posterity. But the facility of obtaining money in this 
way often presents a seductive temptation to states- 
men and to political parties desirous of carrying out 
a policy of their own, and for a ready and persistent 
adherence to which they cannot steadily rely on the 



478 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

bulk of the population, nor expect to meet with all the 
sacrifices which the policy — if paid for at once, as is 
said ^within the year/ that is, by simple taxation — 
would involve. 

Yet not more in political circles than elsewhere 
is the facility for obtaining money always a moral 
justification of the means resorted to for obtaining 
it. That State is most truly a State which carries 
to the highest pitch the notions, so tardily and hardly 
acquired, of its own integrity, continuity, and immor- 
tality. Where the State shows itself reckless in regard 
to its future constituents, it not only demolishes its 
own public credit at home and abroad, sets a pernicious 
example of reckless prodigality in the sight of its own 
subjects, but, to the extent that the financial operations 
go, impairs its own existence by a sort of constitutional 
suicide. 

A more perplexed topic is presented by a very uni- 
versal practice among modern Christian States, as well 
as among the States of antiquity, of organising sexual 
vice by providing a special police machinery in the 
greater towns of a country, and not merely for con- 
trolling the excesses or marking out the local boun- 
daries of vicious indulgence, but for the purpose, or 
certainly with the obvious result, of encouraging and 
facilitating it, at all events, within those boundaries. 
The fact that the whole topic does, from its nature, 
escape the sifting discussion and public criticism to 
which every other class of questionable policy is in free 
States exposed, has had the effect of withdrawing it in 
a considerable degree from the unfettered and direct 
action of the public conscience. It is difficult to draw 
the line between the legitimate province of the State 



MOllALITY OF CRIMINAL PUNISHMENTS. 479 

as occupied in curtailing the outward exhibition of 
vice, and even in restricting the far-radiating physical 
inconveniences brought upon the innocent by the 
guilty, and the undoubted trespass beyond the limits of 
that province committed in giving- any, even the 
minutest, impetus to vice itself, in degrading one sex 
for the presumed gain of the other, and in lowering 
everywhere the standard of moral perfection which the 
laws of the State, though incompetent directly to pro- 
duce, must invariably confess and undeviatingly tend 
to bring about. 

When the history of these laws is thoroughly ex- 
amined, it will be found that the defences of them 
are wholly ex post facto, that they rest on imagined 
benefits, which either do not follow at all, or are due 
to some casual operation of the police system which 
has nothing intrinsically to do with the licensing and 
medical inspection which is the essence of it; and 
that, lastly, the whole method owes its origin to coun- 
tries and states of society so far already sunk in uni- 
versal profligacy as to make for them the thought of 
even average purity and self-restraint seem a mere 
Utopian vision. But it cannot be admitted that the 
morality of the future should be ^ cabined, cribbed, 
confined ' by the dwarfing shrouds in which the dead 
past has buried its dead. 

There is yet one topic which must be noticed as 
affecting the State's conscience of right and wrong — 
that is, the legitimacy of the use of certain punish- 
ments for crimes. It is now generally recognised that 
there are certain kinds of punishments, such, for 
example, as those which involve torture, mutilation. 



480 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

and certain forms of infamy, which no circumstances 
whatever can justify as available. There are others, 
such as capital punishment, on which opinion may be 
said to be sharply and decisively divided. There are 
others, such as flogging, on which public opinion may 
be said to be wavering and unsettled. 

Two principles of moral criticism have, however, 
clearly emerged of late years. One is, that there are 
certain moral and personal attributes which constitute 
the human nature of every one, and that there are 
kinds of outrage on this nature which no end whatever 
can justify the State in resorting to. Again, it is 
getting recognised that, in all criminal punishments, 
the moral improvement of the individual offender 
must be always maintained as one of the ends in 
view, so far as it is compatible with the protection of 
society. 

The application of these principles in detail is 
indeed not easy, and will long continue to promote 
debate among philanthropists and reformers. But it 
is no small gain to the cause of morality to have for 
ever altered the aspect of criminal punishments from 
being violent, vengeful, and retaliatory conflicts with 
the defenceless wretch for whose crimes society is at 
least as much responsible as himself, to a deliberative 
and cautious essay how far the minimum of pain to 
one may be combined with the maximum of profit to 
all the parties involved. The majesty and authority of 
the State is far better manifested in using its giant 
strength with precision, with gentleness, and with 
caution, than (as was once supposed) in surrendering 
itself to the promptings of angry passion and of a 
capricious vindictiveness better befitting children or 



MORALITY BETWEEN STATES. 481 

madmen than rational human beings called to share in 
the divine task of government. 

The aspects towards right and wrong of the indi- 
vidual citizen and of the State, in its domestic relations, 
have hitherto attracted less attention than the more 
obvious moral constitution and responsibilities of the 
State when brought into contact with other political or 
imperfectly civilised communities. 

In this last case the unity and integrity of the 
State is pre-eminently conspicuous, and the complexity 
of its action, as well as the counter-movements of 
opposed parties, from the ultimate reconciliation of 
which every determinate course of proceeding springs, 
is cloaked under the form of decisive administration 
and simple diplomatic utterances. 

Indeed, in very ancient times, the good or bad 
faith of States towards each other in respect of the 
strict observance of treaties, of engagements towards 
commanders in the field, of promises to ambassadors, 
and of capitulations of all sorts, were held to stamp 
the community with a permanent reputation of the 
highest or the lowest kind. It cannot be said that in 
modern times the stringent exactions of moralists in 
respect of ordinary good faith between State and State, 
as between other moral beings, is in any degree re- 
laxed. A wholesome difference and improvement, how- 
ever, is observable in the greater extension to which 
the moral scrutiny is carried out, and the more precise 
details to which it is held practically to apply. 

It is especially in the transactions of a stronger 
with a weaker State, — or with a State which, through 
the momentary event of an unsuccessful war, finds 
itself in the condition of a weaker State^ — that the 



482 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 

force of a purely ethical canon of action is most de- 
cisively put to the test. 

Not to dwell on the more perplexed and ambiguous 
history of British policy in the East Indies during the 
last century and a half, and the current treatment of 
hopeful aboriginal communities by British colonists, — 
only too often aided by a mass of unscrupulous pre- 
judice and guilty ignorance at home, — the treatment 
of the great, though unhappily, for too many purposes, 
impotent, Chinese Empire, is a deplorable illustration 
of the quantity of iniquity which, even at the present 
day, one State may wreak on another without exciting 
animadversion or odium either at home or abroad. 

From the numerous examples which have been 
above adduced of the application of a strictly moral 
standard to the political acts of citizens, and to the 
executive, legislative, and international acts of States, 
it will have been sufficiently seen where the main diffi- 
culty lies in applying in detail the best acknowledged 
general principles. In all policy there must be a cer- 
tain element of conjecture, of calculation, of compari- 
son of ends, of the adjustment of means to ends, and, 
in a word, of quantitative measurement, which, in the 
more simple and spontaneous domain of individual life 
and action, would be irrelevant, and might seem even 
base. But at the best, and when the State is idealised 
to the utmost as an independent and responsible moral 
being, it still retains certain of the qualities and condi- 
tions of an artificially constructed machine. 

The State can only be called into dynamical action 
by a concert of forces producible by a more or less 
complex series of casually co-operating, but more fre- 
quently conflicting, agencies. Much of the healthiest 



STATE MORALITY IN THE FUTURE. 483 

part of political life is concerned with bringing the 
latent opposition of persons and parties face to face, 
and with reducing the points of final divergence to 
such an extent that a clear line of common and united 
action may be discovered. But all this process implies 
delay, hesitation, uncertainty, and, even in some way, 
concession and compromise. In State life there are 
mental conditions which, on the face of them, are 
alien to those prompt and, as it were, intrusive as well 
as decisive suggestions, which in the individual person 
of healthy moral organisation are never lacking, and 
are deferred to with unquestioning obedience. 

But the fact that prudence and calculation, as well 
as a peculiar complexity of action, distinguish the con- 
duct of a State from that of any one of its citizens 
when dealing with his own private affairs, is only an 
aggravation of the difficulty of the moral problem so 
soon as it is presented, and is no reason for ignoring 
its existence, and still less for a precipitate and nuga- 
tory attempt to solve it. 

In the region of individual life and existence the 
triumphs of Christian morality have, after centuries of 
ecclesiastical vagaries, been finally vindicated. It is 
now pretty universally confessed that no distinguishing 
line can be drawn between the consummated perfection 
of nature, for which the Pagan moralist longed and 
longs, and the spotless holiness of the Christian who 
deems himself bound to be perfect as his Father in 
Heaven is perfect. The last triumphs of the same 
morality will manifest themselves in the building up 
for each temporal State of a finely and exactly adjusted 
polity, or, in other words, of a city which ' lieth four 
square,' of which ' the length is as large as the breadth/ 



484 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 

and the slow and struggling formation of which will 
be then, and not till then, fully vindicated when, in the 
spiritual region, the kingdoms of this world are trans- 
formed into a new and larger city-State, having ever- 
lasting foundations, and whose builder and maker is 
God. 



INDEX. 



ADM 

A DMINISTRA TI VE, the term, 

-^-*- history and explanation of, 
100 

Agrarian problems, account of 
Koman, 401 

America, history of Party in, in 
reference to political organisa- 
tion, 18D-191 

American Colonies, problems sug- 
gested by history of the, 316- 
318 

— Revolution, its place in the 
history of political science, 46 

— Secession War, criticism of 
grounds of, 442-445 

' — War of Independence, com- 
parison of, with the French 
Revolution, 441, 442 

Aeistotle, place of his works in 
the history of political science, 
23, 24,181 

Army, problems relating to the 
management of the, 257 

Austin, his views on centralisa- 
tion, 289 

— his Utilitarian theory, 453 
Australian Colonies, connexion of 

England with her, 332-334 
their disposition to extend 

the province of Government, 386 
history of Party in, 191, 192 



BALLOT, use and moral justifi- 
cation of the, 464 
Bank Charter Act, the, its politi- 
cal bearings, 267, 268 



CHU 

Bank of England, the, its political 
position, 267 

— of France, the, its political po- 
sition, 267 

— functions of the State in rela- 
tion to a national, 421 

Briberv, grounds of immorality 
of, 462 

British India, land policy in, 397 

recent changes in adminis- 
tration of, 340 

BuRKE, his ' Pieflections,' place of, 
in political science, 49, 124 



C^ABIXET, constitutional char- 
.' acter of the English, 249, 250 

Calhoun, Mr., his * States Pdghts ' 
doctrine, 443 

Capital punishment, arguments on, 
as illustrating logical methods, 
121 

Centralisation J analysis and his- 
tory of term, 289, 290 

Chamber, problems relating to a 
Second, 202, 236 sq. 

China, causes of its commercial 
exclusiveness, 368 

— its place in the modern po- 
litical world, 135 

Christian Church, the, its relation 
to political organisation, 174, 
185 sq. 

Church Councils, their relation to 
political organisation, 187 

— of England, the, its constitu- 
tional position, 415 



486 



INDEX. 



CHU 

Church and State, the relation of, 

considered, 413 sq. 
Codification, place of, in the history 

of law, 81-84 
Colonies, American, place of, in 

the history of political science, 47 

— — problems suggested by 
history of the, 316-818 

— Australian, connexion of Eng- 
land with her, 332-384 

— the British, in America, as 
illustrating the history of con- 
stitutions, 175 

— land policy in British, 400 

— possibility of representation of, 
334 sq. 

Colonisation, political aspects of, 

324 sq. 
Colony, Crown, what is a, 176, 177 
Commercial Companies, relation 

of. the State to, 410-412 
* Commune,' bearings of the history 

of the French, 256 
Communism, account of modern, 

379 
Companies, commercial, relation 

of the State to, 410-412 
CoMTE, M. AuGUSTE, place of his 

treatises in political science, 

62, 53 
his views on the relation 

of women to men, 141 
Constitutio?ial, the term, history 

and explanation of, 60, 176 
ConstitutioDS, general account of, 

174 sq. 
Contract law, an occasion of 

Grovernment intervention, 389 
Contract, the Social, place of the 

idea of, in the history of poli- 
tical science, 45, 124, 182 
Crimes, moral questions affecting 

punishment of, 479 



DEBTS, moral questions respect- 
ing rational, 477, 478 
— , public, functions of the Exe- 
cutive relating to, 264 sq. 
Dependencies, Government of, 
811 sq. 



GOV 

EAST INDIA COMPANY, poli- 
tical development of the, 319, 

320 

its policy, 369 

Education, national, functions of 

the State in respect to, 424 
Electoral franchise, examination 

of principles relating to the, 

198 sq. 
Emigration, political aspects of, 

323 sq. 
Exemitive, the term, history and 

account of, 87 sq. 
Executive Authority, the, its re- 
lation to the Legislature, 246 

sq. 



FAMILY, the, its relations to the 
State, 166 
* Federalist,' place of the, in the 

history of political science, 48 
Federation, ancient and modern 

attempts at, 279 
Feudal system, bearing of the, on 

land tenures, 156 
Feudalism, its place in the history 

of politics, 37 
Foreign relations, political pro- 
blems involved in, 342 sq. 
FoRTESCUE, place of his works in 

the history of political science, 

41 
France, history of Party in, 193- 

195 
Franchise, electoral, examination 

of principles relating to the, 

198 sq. 
French Revolution, influence of 

the, on political theory, 375 

— — its place in the history of 
political science, 49-52 

— Senate, organisation of the, 309 



GAMBLING, policy of laws for 
the prevention of, 475, 476 
Geographical area, the, of modern 

politics, 126 sq. 
Government, the term, history and 
explanation of, 67-69 



INDEX. 



487 



GOV 

Government of Dependencies, pro- 
blems relating to the, 311 sq. 

— investigation into the province 
of, 371 

— l(x;al, problems relating to, 
277 sq, 

Greece, history of the States of, 
its scientitic bearings, 25-29 

Grote, Mr., his views on Athenian 
character, 233 

• — Professor, his treatise en Utili- 
tarianism, 453 



HARE, Mr., scheme of, for the 
representation of minorities, 
224 
as a corrective of corrup- 
tion, 465 
Health, the public, functions of 
Government respecting, 406 

sq. 
History, Sir G. C. Lewis's remarks 

on the use of, in politics, 114 
HOBBES, his place in the history 

of political science, 42 
Hooker, his Ecclesiastical Polity, 

place of, in the history of politi- 
cal science, 38 
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, his 

treatise on the province of 

Government, 372 



TNDEPEXDENCE of a State, 

J- what it means, 351 sq. 

India, British, duties of English 
Government to, 333 

recent changes in adminis- 
tration of, 340 

land policy in, 397 

Intervention, its connexion with 
the independence of States, 353, 
354 

Ireland, the land problem in, 398 



JAPAN, its place in the modern 
political world, 135 
Jewish State, the, its relations to 
family life, 161 



Judges, their constitutional func- 
tions, 275 

Judicial authority, the, its relation 
to the Legislative and Executive 
Authority, 246, 248 



LAND, State intervention in re- 
spect of, 395 sq. 

— tenure of, as an element of 
political life, 147 sq. 

Law, the term, history and analy- 
sis of, 69 sq. 

Legislative^ the term, history and 
account of, 87 sq. 

Legislative authority, its relation 
to the Executive, 246 sq. 

Lewis, Sir G. C, estimate of his 
< Methods of Pteasoning in Poli- 
tics,' 109, 114 

, his remarks on politi- 
cal Utopias, 22, 23 

Liquor traffic, problems relating to 
regulation of, 300, 301 

Local Boards, problems relating to 
the organisation of, 807 

— Government, problems relating 
to, 277 sq. 

of towns, 304 

Locomotion, fum tions of Govern- 
ment respecting, 405 

Lords, Ilouse of, problems relating 
to, 236 sq. 

Lotteries, immorality of State, 
475, 476 



MACHIAVELLI, his place in 
the history of political sci- 
ence, 36 
Maine, Sir H. S., his views on the 

introduction of English tenures 

into India, 151 
Malthus, illustration from his 

population theory, 376 
Marriage, history of, as a political 

factor, 159 
— monogamic, political grounds 

of, 473, 474 
Mazzini, pkice of, in the history 

of political science, 54 



488 



INDEX. 



MED 

Medical profession, political dis- 
qualifications of the, 408 

Mill, Mr. J. S., on the adminis- 
tration of British India, 340 

on relations of wo- 
men to men, 139, 140 

his remarks on ex- 
periments in politics, 113 

his views on the pro- 
vince of Government, 372 

Minorities, problems relating to 
representation of, 219 sq. 

Mohammedanism, its polygamic 
aspect, 160 5^. 

Monogamic marriage, political 
grounds of, 473, 474 

Mormonism, its polygamic as- 
pects, 163, 164, 474 " 

Municipal Corporation Act, po- 
litical aspects of the, 308 



NATIONALITY, influence of 
doctrine of, 345, 358 

Navigation, functions of the State 
in relation to, 422, 423 

— Laws, political aspects of the, 
317 

Navy, problems relating to the 
management of the, 257 

New South Wales, how its con- 
stitution was founded, 387 

Nihilism, its influence on political 
theory, 379 



OTTOMAN Empire, the, ques- 
tion of its political \dtality, 
132, 133, 136, 137 



PAKIS, Treaty of, 1814, political 
consequences of, 343, 344 
Parliaments, problems relating to 

duration of, 217 
Party, historic bearings of, on 

political organisation, 188 sq. 
Party, various uses of the term, 

61, 62 
Peel, Sir Robert, his railway 

policy, 406 



REV 

Plato, his place in the history of 

political science, 22 
Plebiscite, the, its constitutional 

aspects, 201, 202, 226 
Police, problems relating to the 

management of, 254, 298, 478 
Political economy, its influence on 

political theory, 375, 376, 392 

— reasoning, inquiry into, 107 sq. 

— terms, account of, 56 sq. 
Politics, science of, its nature and 

limits, 1 sq. 
Poor law administration, as a 
topic of local government, 296, 
297 

— laws, their indirect political 
influence, 377, 382, 389, 392 

Prerogative, explanation of the 
terms, 105 

President of the United States, 
constitutional position of the, 
201, 248 

Press, the, as a political influence, 
234 

Prime Minister, constitutional po- 
sition of the English, 251 

Privy Council, its constitutional 
character, 251 

Province of Government, investi- 
gation of the, 371 sq. 

Provincial Government, Roman, 
problems suggested by history 
of, 314, 315 

Punishments, moral questions af- 
fecting criminal, 479, 480 



RAILWAYS, Government policy 
relating to, 405, 406 

Religion, functions of the State 
in relation to, 412 

Rexan, M., his historical views, 
450 

Representation of colonies, pos- 
sibility of, 334 sq. 

minorities, problems relating 

to, 219 sq. 

Revolution, the American, its place 
in the history of political sci- 
ence, 46 



INDEX. 



489 



REV 

Revolution, the English, compared 
with the French, 439-441 

French, its inlluence on po- 
litical theory, H75 

its place in the history 

of political science, 40-52 

— moral duties in respect of, 
465 sq. 

— period in England, account of 
the, 435-439 

Eevolutions in States, inquiry 
into causes of, 427 sq. 

Right, the terra, history and ana- 
lysis of, 100 sq. 

Roman Provincial Government, 
problems suggested by the his- 
tory of, 314, 3^15 

— Eepublic and Empire, place of, 
in history of political science, 
31-34, 131 

Rome, account of the agrarian 
problems of, 401 

— as an exhibition of senile 
failure, 131 

Rousseau, his views on a state 

of nature, 117 
Russia, effects of its extent of 

territory, 323 



OCHOOL BOARDS, their poli- 

O tical aspects, 295 

method of election of Eng- 
lish, 227 

Science of Politics, its nature and 
limits, 1 sq. 

Secession, American War of, cri- 
ticism of the grounds of, 442-445 

Senate, French, organisation of 
the, 309 

— of United States, its functions 
in foreign policy, 355 

Slavery, its immorality, 471 

— its place in the history of po- 
litical science, 25 

Social Contract, place of the 
notion of, in the history of po- 
litical science, 45, 124, 182 

Socialism, account of modern, 379, 
380 

Spexcee, Herbert, Mr., his views 



UTO 

on the province of Government, 
372, 381, 382 
St ate ^ the term, history and 
analysis of, ()3 sq. 

— Church and, relations of, can- 
sidered, 413 sq. 

— elements and growth of a, 
138 sq. 

— independence of a, what it 
means, 351 sq. 

Statistics, their modern use in 

political inquiries, 18 
Suez Canal, policy of English 

purchase of shares in the, 270 sq. 
Suffrage, extension of the, as a 

moral question, 472 



TAXATIOx^T, immorality of 
fraudulent evasions of, 459 

— principles of poUcy affecting, 
403 

Towns as areas of local govern- 
ment, 302 sq. 

— problems relating to the repre- 
sentation of, 212 sq. 

Trades Unions, their bearing on 

State organisation, 171 
Treaty of Paris, 1814, political 

consequences of, 343, 344 



TTNCONSTITUTIONAL, his- 
^ tory and explanation of the 
term, 60 

United States, constitutional 
position of the President of the, 
201, 248 

constitutional problems re- 
lating to the, 179, 180 

growth of the, its place in 

the history of political science. 
46 

Senate of the, its functions 

in foreign policy, 355 

Utilitarianism, its place in poli- 
tical theory, 451 sq. 

Utilitarians, place of English, in 
the history of political science, 
54, 55 

Utopia, Sir T. More's, place of, in 



490 



INDEX. 



UTO 

the history of political science, 
38 
Utopias, Sir G. C. Lewis's remarks 
on, 22, 23 



Y7ICE, legislative policy respect- 
V ing, 478, 479 



WOM 

Victoria, colony of, how its con- 
stitution was founded, 387 

WAR, prospects of its continu- 
ance, 361 
Ward, Mr., his account of the in- 
fluence of the Papacy, 450 
Women, their political relation to 
men, 139, 182 



Scientific Publications. 



A TREATIffiE ON CHE:>IISTRY. By H. E. Rofcoe, F. R. S., Dnd C. 

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